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WASHINGTON - (Daily Journal)
House
members will attempt to block funding for new travel and spending restrictions
on Cuban Americans that the Bush administration will begin enforcing. Calling
the new limits cruel and immoral, House members said they will try to prevent
the Treasury Department from spending money to enforce the regulations. The
lawmakers met with Treasury and State Department officials to urge the
administration to back off its latest effort to clamp down on the Castro regime.
"These new rules and regulations are at best mean-spirited and immoral; they
have no rationale that is acceptable," said Rep. William Delahunt, D-Mass., a
leader of Congress' Cuba Working Group. "And they inflict pain and anguish on
families not only in Cuba but here in the United States." The new sanctions also
came under fire from a Florida lawmaker who has been a consistent backer of the
administration's travel embargo to Cuba. Rep. Jim Davis, D-Fla.,
said that the regulations, which limit Cuban Americans to one trip to their
homeland every three years, will hurt innocent people in both countries. Davis
also introduced legislation to reverse the new changes and maintain the current
standards, which allow Cuban Americans to visit once a year and lets them send a
maximum of $1,200 a year to families in Cuba.
Cubans, he said, depend on their U.S.-based relatives "not only for moral
support but also for the delivery of food, medicine, clothing and money."
Delahunt said the meeting with Dan Fisk, the deputy assistant secretary of
state, and Office of Foreign Assets Control Director Richard Newcomb, was tense.
Of particular concern, said Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, R-Mo., is the new limit on
visits. "I don't know that I have ever seen anything that is so antifamily in my
life," she said, noting that a person visiting a dying mother in Cuba would not
be allowed to return for a funeral if it were to take place in the same
three-year period. "It makes me mad to talk about them." Other new rules limit
travel for athletic teams, prohibit Cuba travelers from bringing up to $100
worth of merchandise back to the United States as previously allowed, and allow
Cuban Americans to send money home only to immediate family members. We believe
that family members and loved ones in Cuba should be able to live the same free
and prosperous lives we enjoy in the Untied States," said Treasury Department
spokeswoman Molly Millerwise. "These strengthened
measures, which will choke off the hard currency aiding and abetting the Castro
regime, will help bring that day closer." House members said they are supporting
Davis' legislation, but their first and best opportunity to block the new
sanctions will be in the treasury appropriations bill that is expected to come
up next month.
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