Majority Will Hijacked Again -- to Block our Freedom to Travel
Please read this notice from the Latin America Working Group,
www.lawg.org (& see the historical background which follows):Contact: Mavis Anderson, Philip Schmidt, 202-546-7010
Latin America Working Group
10 a.m., November 13, 2003
Dear Cuba Policy Advocates:
It is time to protest! Last night, behind closed doors and without giving
any opportunity for the full conference committee to vote, Republican
leadership stripped the Cuba travel amendment from the FY04
Transportation-Treasury Appropriations bill. This is a travesty.
Last month, the Senate voted 59-36 to include an amendment that would
eliminate funding for the enforcement of the Cuba travel ban. The House
included the identical amendment in September by a vote of 227-188. In a
further show of strong Senate bipartisan support for ending the travel ban,
the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved a bill, S. 950, to lift
the Cuba travel ban entirely, by a vote of 13-5.
The purpose of a conference committee is to reconcile differences between
the House and Senate versions of a particular bill. The margins of support
on the issue of travel to Cuba reflected a clear and undeniable statement of
policy intent by Congress. Since both Houses of Congress passed the same
amendment, there was nothing for the conferees to reconcile. Please see the
LAWG press release below for further statements.
ACTION 1: Call your two senators and your representative to loudly protest
this subversion of democracy. Talking points:
* Polls show that the American people want the travel ban to Cuba to end.
* It is the bipartisan will of the Congress that the travel ban end.
* It would benefit the Cuban people for the travel ban to end.
* The White House and the Republican leadership should not have the power to
remove the amendment against the will of the people and of the Congress.
* This is an undemocratic action. We protest.
The US Capitol Switchboard number is 202.224.3121, or look your member up on
the internet at
ACTION 2: Contact President Bush to protest pandering to Florida electoral
votes. Same talking points.
Phone numbers:
Comments: 202.456.1111; Switchboard: 202.456.1414; Fax: 202.456.2461
Email: President George W. Bush
president@whitehouse.govTHIS ACTION IS A THREAT TO OUR DEMOCRACY
On Wednesday night (11/12/03), the provision to end enforcement of the US travel ban to Cuba was removed from the legislation by a small group determined to continue the wall dividing the people of the US and Cuba. The identical provision had been passed by both houses of congress by significant majorities as part of the Appropriations bill for the Depts. of Treasury and Transportation. Sen. Mike Enzi (Rep., WY) reported that this agreed language "disappeared" from the report of the joint Conference committee, at the behest of the GOP congressional leadership: "It was stripped by committee staffers even before members of the committee met. There was no vote taken on the measure. Poof, it just disappeared into the congressional ether." As Sen. Max Baucus (Dem., Montana) noted,"For a few individuals in backroom negotiations to override the will of a majority of Congress sets a dangerous, undemocratic precedent."
But this is not the first time that anti-democratic measures have been used to defeat or delay majority votes – when it comes to Cuba. In 1999 and 2000, the same forces pressured conference committees to reverse provisions that would have relaxed our sanctions, as passed by a clear majority vote by at least one full house of congress.
John Ashcroft, when he was a Republican Senator from Missouri in Oct. 1999, protested that an "overwhelming consensus" in both houses to lift the ban on sale of food and medicine to Cuba was scuttled "behind closed doors" by "[a] select few in Congress ..." The Senate passed the provision, which had not been formally considered in the House. He added, "From somewhere, in the dark of the night in the conference committee, out goes that provision which had overwhelming support, ..." [Cong. Rec., page S 12453; Oct. 13, 1999]. He added, with reference to food embargo in particular: "My message today to the Congress is simply this: Tear down this wall we have built." [S12454]
In October 2000, the House majority voted to end all funding of the travel ban, the Senate held no formal vote on the travel ban (but both houses voted to allow sale of food to Cuba).The House leadership then refused to let the conference committee meet until they lined up a majority to tighten the ban on US travel to Cuba, the opposite of what its members voted for! U.S. farmers were allowed to sell to Cuba, under unique restrictions which still continue, but only in a so-called "compromise" which codified into the federal statutes the existing administrative regulations on the travel ban, so that Pres. Clinton could not liberalize them at the end of his administration. (Pres. Bush nonetheless tightened them in March of this year, eliminating the largest licensing category.) U.S. Sen. Christopher Dodd (D. Conn.) stated "... a small number of individuals in the Congress may have temporarily succeeded in hijacking the democratic process with respect to this issue and in thwarting the will of the majority with respect to loosening U.S. restrictions on travel and sales of food and medicine to Cuba. But let me assure you that this issue is not settled. Those of us who want to see meaningful change in our Cuba policy will be back next year raising this matter on the floors of the House and Senate. And I predict that when the democratic process is allowed to work, the results of last night's conference will be decisively reversed and U.S. policy toward Cuba will be finally put on the right track ... " [Cong. Rec., page S 10065; Oct. 6, 2000]
And this year, when identical language has been adopted by both Houses, we see the most blatant anti-
democratic action yet, when on Nov. 12, 2003, "in the dark of the night in the conference committee, out goes that provision which had overwhelming support, ..." "Poof, it just disappeared"
It is INDEED time to protest this surrender of the congressional rules and majority will, simply to deny US residents the right to travel. We cannot wait til "next year" – as the administration has sharply escalated its threats and harrassment against US travelers to Cuba, including for the first time in over 11 years, beginning administrative prosecutions of such travelers for the offense of "tourism."
--Art Heitzer, Natl. Lawyers Guild's Cuba Subcommittee,
aheitzer@igc.org; www.nlg.org/cuba; www.cubawifriends.org