Senate bill would OK Cuba travel

A check-in sign for the ABC Charter flight to Cuba is seen at Miami International Airport on April 7, 2009 in Miami, Florida. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty images File)
A check-in sign for the ABC Charter flight to Cuba is seen at Miami International Airport on April 7, 2009 in Miami, Florida. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty images File) | Joe Raedle

A bipartisan group of senators proposed legislation Thursday to end the decades-long ban on Americans traveling to Cuba.

Supporters say that five decades of travel restrictions have failed to bring democracy to Cuba and that it’s time to try something else.

“We tried it for 50 years. We said if we closed the door on Cuba,” communism would fall, said Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., one of the bill’s sponsors. “We did not succeed in that policy. It’s time for a new policy.”

Durbin said communism fell in the former Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact nations only after they “took a look outside and said there’s a better world.

“The same is true when it comes to Cuba,” he said. “We don’t have to set out to change Cuba as our No. 1 reason [for the bill], but I think we’re going to see dramatic change in Cuba if there’s more travel and exchange in business between our two countries.”

Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., who proposed similar legislation years ago when he served in the House, defended the group’s push to end the restrictions without bargaining with the Cuban government for something in return.

“This is a sanction, or prohibition, on Americans, not Cubans,” he said. “We’re simply saying that Americans have the right to travel wherever they would like to.”

The senators said that while their proposal offers no guarantees that democracy will flourish on the communist island nation, allowing Americans to visit Cuba likely will jump-start more freedoms there.

The bill wouldn’t affect the United States’ trade embargo with Cuba, though Flake said he supports lifting that ban as well.

Other sponsors of the bills include Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.; Jerry Moran, R-Kan.; Tom Udall, D-N.M.; and John Boozman, R-Ark.

The senators’ move comes after President Obama announced in December plans to restore diplomatic relations with Cuba and loosen the five-decade-old trade embargo.

U.S. business, particularly the agriculture industry, also has been pushing for the embargo to end.

But while easing relations with Cuba has widespread support among congressional Democrats, several conservative Republicans, including Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida, whose parents were born in Cuba, and Ted Cruz of Texas, whose father fled the island nation as a young man, strongly oppose such a move.

Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., also has hinted he’s in no hurry to normalize relations with Cuba.