Lawmakers drop effort to ease Cuba travel restrictions

Thursday, November 13, 2003 Posted: 1236 GMT ( 8:36 PM HKT)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Congressional bargainers dropped efforts to end the government's ban on travel by most Americans to Cuba, awarding a victory to President Bush.

Though the House and Senate had each approved provisions earlier this year ending the travel restrictions, negotiators from the two Republican-led chambers omitted that language from a compromise spending bill they shook hands on late Wednesday. The Bush administration had issued repeated threats of vetoing the overall bill if it eased the travel ban to the Caribbean nation.

"There's no alternative other than dropping the provision" from the final bill, argued Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Alabama, a chief author of the final bill.

Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-North Dakota, an advocate of lifting the ban, tried persuading lawmakers to settle for a narrower provision allowing travel to the Communist-run country by farm groups promoting sales of agricultural products.

But it died when House bargainers refused by voice vote to accept it. American farmers can sell to Cuba if they are paid with cash.

More...
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/11/13/congress.cuba.ap/

So much for freedom and democracy in the USA. What a truly revolting shame.

Chalk up another victory for George UU Bush and also the right-wing House Republican intransigents in beating efforts to defund the Cuba travel ban.

Lurking moderates and moderate-conservatives growing more frightened by the George UU Bush mis-adminsitration as well as by the actions of the hard right-controlled House of Representatives and the conservative-dominated US Senate should consider that just voting Dubya out of the White House is NOT going to reverse the ruinous course where this country is headed. The very people who proposed toughening the travel ban and made it more difficult for any future presidential administration to repeal the travel ban and the embargo are still very much in power and are likely to remain so if the voters personalize their problems with George the Lesser and leave their Republican congressional representative and their Republican senator in office.

It's just not one man or one man's policies, it's the Republican Party as a whole that should be held accountable.