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CounterPunch
August
21, 2002
The
Politics of the Cuba Embargo
Personal Loyalty in Congress
by Tom Crumpacker
An August 17 article by Mark Helm of Hearst Washington
Bureau about our House Speaker Dick Armey's upcoming retirement
casts some light on the way our Congress and Administration have
been dealing with Cuba issues in recent years. By way of background
recall:
(1) under House rules the House leadership--the
Speaker and majority whip (Tom Delay, also from Texas)--determine
when, where and how bills are voted on;
(2) bills have been introduced every
year and have been pending for many years to repeal the Cuba
embargo and Helms-Burton blockade--and have had very substantial,
increasing support--but votes on the merits with full debate
with one partial exception have never been allowed;
(3) the only other Cuba bills voted on
have been on amendments to Administration budget requests for
money to enforce the embargo and travel restrictions, which have
to be voted on each year, and by substantial, increasing margins
the travel enforcement money has been turned down in the Hou!
se the last three summers and once in the Senate (where it comes
up again soon, maybe next month);
(4) in November, 2000 a vote was finally
forced on a bill which would allow medicine and nutritional food
to be sold to Cuba, which passed in both chambers by large margins
only to be gutted in conference by the addition of two provisions
tacked on by Miami Congressman Diaz-Balart, apparently appointed
to the conference committee by Armey and Delay, which prohibited
normal use of credit in sales to Cuba and "codified"
the unconstitutional travel restrictions (completely unrelated
to the bill which had been voted on), which was then signed into
law by Clinton in that form;
(5) regarding this maneuver Rep. Mark
Sanford (R, SC) said his leadership had "behaved shamefully"
and Sen. Max Baucus called the matter a "travesty of our
democracy";
(6) this summer the House also voted
for amendments to the budget requests to end the credit restrictions
and the limits on amounts which could! be given to Cuban family
members and against amending the budget by ending the embargo,
200-- 225.
This latter vote may not be an accurate
measure of the full anti-embargo sentiment in the House because
some members might have felt it was procedurally improper to
do away with all the embargo laws on a budget request amendment,
including the lengthy Toricelli (1992) and Helms-Burton (1996)
provisions, without amending or repealing or addressing these
laws directly.
In other words this vote appears to have
been just another "show trial" by Congress to help
present members keep their seats or a preliminary testing of
the waters never intended to be legal. The Cuban people don't
have lobbyists or numerous people or powerful organizations working
for them in the US Congress. Our Constitution provides that foreign
affairs are supposed to be in the domain of the executive branch
representing the nation as a whole. The August 17 Helm article,
titled "Armey's independence shows as time runs out,"
quotes Armey as follows:
"He predicted the 42 year old Cuba
trade embargo won't last long because it's losing support in
Congress. Armey said his own past support for the embargo was
based on his loyalty to two (Miami) Cuban-American House members,
Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. Armey also said
that House members whose districts could benefit from trade and
travel to Cuba should vote against the embargo."
In other words we are to believe that
Armey's personal loyalty to two House members out of 425--rather
than his own policy considerations or his loyalty to the Administration--has
brought about two additional unnecessary years of virtual prohibition
of food and medicine and continued travel restriction. The question
I have of Mr. Armey is this: how many innocent Cubans have become
sick or died in the last two years because of your loyalty to
your two Miami friends?
A binding vote with full debate on the
merits of the embargo or the travel restrictions has still not
happened and apparently is not in the cards this year again because
of Armey and the well named Delay. Therefore Congresspersons
cannot meaningfully vote against the embargo as Armey now suggests.
The "demand" of the two Miami congresspersons is the
same weak excuse Armey and then Senate majority leader Trent
Lott gave for their maneuvering two years ago. Despite what Armey
says, it's obvious from what our President has said about Cuba
issues and the way things work in Washington that Armey and Delay
have been acting under the direction of the White House. It's
also clear that if Armey were running again, he wouldn't be trying
to take the hit for the Administration. Delay has been uncharacteristically
quiet on Cuba issues this summer. He appears to be the choice
for our next Speaker if the Republicans keep control of the House
in November. If this happens it's doubtful t! hat the Cuba embargo
will be voted on until 2005 if ever.
This is another example of how the people
who run this country are using Florida's Cuban-Americans to take
the political heat off themselves for their absurd, genocidal
Cuba policy. The Florida Cuban-American community actually is
relatively small, less than 9% of the state's population, and
according to the most recent polls I've seen, done by Florida
International University about a year ago, Miami Cuban-Americans
are about evenly divided on lifting the embargo and strongly
in favor of lifting the travel restrictions.
Many years ago the two Miami districts
in question were gerrymandered, so the two incumbents get to
run uncontested there. They are part of the 85% of Congressional
seats in this so-called democracy of ours which are uncontested
or not seriously contested.
Tom Crumpacker
is with the Miami Coalition to End the US Embargo of Cuba. He
can be reached at: Crump8@aol.com
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