Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) has joined 23 senators from both sides of the aisle in urging President Obama to facilitate agricultural and medical exports to Cuba and to lift the travel ban.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee had been scheduled on Sept. 29 to mark up a bill that would open up agricultural trade and travel with Cuba, but committee Chairman Howard Berman (D-Calif.) postponed the session citing the likelihood that Congress would go into recess later that day, as proved to be the case. Berman says he remains determined to mark up a bill during the lame duck session that would lift the U.S. ban on travel to Cuba .
The letter from the senators expresses support for regulatory changes the Obama administration is considering to boost people-to-people contact between the United States and Cuba . However, the letter also urges additional reforms. For example, the senators call for repeal of a 2005 Treasury Department rule requiring U.S. exporters to receive cash payments before agricultural goods were shipped from the United States to Cuba , which effectively ended all cash-based food sales to the island.
"We strongly urge repeal of this rule and reinstatement of a rule that is consistent with the cash-in-advance requirement and the intent of Congress to expand food sales," the senators say.
The letter also urges the president to direct the Treasury Department to lift the requirement that cash payment for U.S. food and medicine sold to Cuba be routed through third-country banks. "This requirement, which is not mandated by the legislation, delays and increases the cost of these transactions."
