Good news.
A congressional panel is poised to take the first step toward ending a decades-old U.S. ban on travel to Cuba and removing other hurdles to food sales to the Caribbean island, a senior lawmaker said on Tuesday.
"This bill has been needed for a long time," House of Representatives Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson said in a statement ahead of committee action on Wednesday.
The bipartisan bill that Peterson helped craft with Representative Jerry Moran, a Kansas Republican, enjoys broad support from U.S. farm and business groups that favor ending the nearly 50-year-old U.S. embargo on communist-led Cuba.
The bill is expected to clear the committee and be sent to the full House, where it will face strong resistance from conservative lawmakers and Cuban-Americans who oppose any step to ease restrictions on trade and travel with Cuba until a democratic government is in power in Havana.
The GOP is split on the issue, with farm state conservatives strongly backing the measure. The US Chamber of Commerce is one of its biggest champions.
This bill is an important first step toward a policy more likely to bring change to Cuba and commercial benefits to the United States. In a letter [ATTACHED] sent this week to all Members of the U.S. Congress, the U.S. Chamber said it would consider giving a Key Vote designation to the legislation should it reach the House floor. It is a rare step for the Chamber to send this signal on a piece of legislation that is still in committee, and the move conveys two things: One, the strength of the U.S. Chamber’s conviction regarding the transformative power of free enterprise and its promise for Cuba; and, two, the seriousness of purpose and sense of possibility that pervades this legislation at this moment – a seminal moment for the U.S. and Cuba.
It's not every day that the Chamber and progressive principles line up, but there's no doubt that the decades-old Cuban embargo has been an epic policy failure, and that it's time to chart a new course.