US lawmakers overturn Obama’s ease on Cuban Travel restrictions

A bill that seeks to overturn President Barack Obama’s easing of restrictions on travel to Cuba has passed the foreign affairs committee of the House of Representatives in yet another attempt to roll back American policy on Cuban travel to the George W. Bush era.

The bill, an amendment to a State Department authorization bill by South Florida Republican Congressman David Rivera, was approved in a strongly bipartisan 36-6 vote.

Congressional analysts said the amendment could be easily stripped of the Cuba language as it makes its way through Capitol Hill, raising its chances of final passage.

The vote tally showed surprising support by Democratic Congressional members for a measure that runs counter to Obama’s policy of easing limits on Cuba travel. Twenty Republicans and 13 Democrats voted in favor of it, while six Democrats voted against.

The amendment was similar to one that another South Florida Republican, Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart, recently attached to a US Treasury appropriations bill by a voice vote.

Both the Rivera and Diaz-Balart amendments would roll back Cuba travel regulations to what they were under President George W. Bush, which Obama eased significantly for Cuban-Americans as well as non-Cuban residents of the United States.

Rivera’s move countered an amendment submitted by New York Democratic Congressman Gregory Meeks, a supporter of expanded travel to Cuba, requiring that the president enforce the Cuba travel regulations.

Rivera’s amendment inserted the words “as in effect on January 19, 2009,” thereby requiring Obama to enforce the much tighter Bush-era regulations.

The committee’s 36-6 vote sent “a clear message to President Obama that Congress does not support the unilateral concessions that his administration has granted to the Castro regime,” Rivera said.

“We must require change and reforms from the Castro dictatorship in regards to human rights and free and open democratic elections before pursuing policies that only serve to enrich the Castro dictatorship,” he said in a statement.

[Source: CMC]