Agriculture Appropriations Amendment: Action Alert
One day we will write to you with the good news that the embargo on Cuba has ended. Today is not that day.
Today is a day for us, again, to be disappointed in a "democratic system" that ignores the will of a bipartisan majority in both chambers of Congress and bows to a veto threat from a President who should not have a vote in the congressional process.
Late last night, a Cuba agriculture sales provision in the Transportation-Treasury Appropriations bill was removed by the House leadership (Rep. Joe Knollenberg (R-MI), chair of the Transportation-Treasury Appropriations subcommittee, and Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), chair of the House Appropriations committee), in essence abdicating decision making power to a strong and repeated veto threat from the White House. This was done in spite of strong and vocal opposition from the Senate side of the conference committee, led by Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND), and in spite of the fact that the Cuba ag sales language had been passed by both the House and Senate in their individual versions of the bill.
The Cuba provision would have withheld funds from the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to enforce tighter restrictions on food and agricultural products sales to Cuba, imposed by the Bush Adminstration earlier this year.
Early Monday evening, a number of senators on the conference committee were still refusing to sign the bill unless the Cuba provision was included. This strong stance by the Senate members of the conference committee was very positive and has never happened before. Previously, the House side of the conference committee has easily removed any Cuba language from the bill. This time the Senate put up a fight. North Dakotans, a call to Senator Dorgan to thank him for his valient efforts would be in order.
Nevertheless, the White House veto threat carried the day, and the Cuba provision was cut.
Many thanks to those of you from Michigan, Massachusetts, Missouri, Washington, California, and elsewhere who called, faxed, and emailed your opinion to your members of Congress in the leadership of this committee process. We encourage you to make one more call to your representative to express your dismay at how the will of the Congress was ignored and how the leadership succeeded in making a mockery of the democratic process.
The United States has sold food and other agricultural products to Cuba since 2000; and in that time, Cuba had become our 25th largest agricultural market. Annual sales had reached nearly $400 million. This has been good for our farmers and for Cuban consumers. Since the tighter restrictions, farm sales to Cuba have slipped from the $400 million figure for 2004 to $261 million between January and September of this year, according to the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council.
See below for a news story with more details about the conference committee process.
CongressDaily
November 15, 2005
Trade
White House Rejects Compromise On Cuba Trade Provision
The White House has rejected compromise language in a contentious Cuban
agricultural trade provision in the FY06 Transportation-Treasury appropriations
bill, Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., said Monday.
Both the House and Senate versions of the spending bill contained language
that would have denied funds to the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign
Assets Control to enforce tighter regulations the Bush administration
placed on agricultural trade with Cuba earlier this year.
Those restrictions require Cuba to pay in advance for any agricultural
products it buys from the United States, rather than follow regular trading
practices, whereby payment is made after products are shipped but before
they are unloaded in the port of destination. U.S. sales to Cuba have
declined this year and farm groups have blamed the new regulations.
Last Thursday, House conferees voted to strip the Cuba language from the
final measure, but Senate conferees refused to agree and conference talks
broke down.
House Transportation-Treasury Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Joseph
Knollenberg, R-Mich., who is chairing the conference, said White House
officials had told him in five conversations that President Bush would
veto the bill if the Cuba language remains in it.
Dorgan, the author of the Senate amendment, said over the weekend he had
agreed to a compromise under which OFAC would be denied $5 million until
it changed the rules.
Dorgan said both Senate and House conferees agreed to the change, but
that the White House rejected it and Republican conferees now want to
remove the Cuba language from the bill.
Dorgan said Republicans "will just not stand up for family farmers'
interests. The majority party doesn't want to do anything that isn't in
perfect sync with anything that President Bush wants. Obviously, the president
has more sway with leaders in Congress than farmers do."
Despite the repeated White House warnings, Dorgan said he does not believe
Bush would veto the Transportation-Treasury spending bill over the Cuba
provision.
Separately, 43 House members led by Reps. Jo Ann Emerson, R-Mo., and Ted
Poe, R-Texas, sent conferees a letter last week asking them to retain
the language.
"If this policy change was meant to be a warning shot at Fidel Castro,
it misses the mark entirely and lands smack in the middle of the American
Heartland," Emerson said in a statement. "Instead of buying
agricultural commodities from U.S. producers with cash, Cuba has turned
to Vietnam and other countries where these goods can be bought on credit."
The letter noted that since the imposition of the new payment-in-advance
rule, U.S. rice sales to Cuba had declined 43 percent, apples 79 percent,
soybean meal 68 percent, poultry 19 percent, wheat 13 percent, dairy products
43 percent, fresh fruit 79 percent, cotton 55 percent, pasta 84 percent
and seafood 46 percent.
Agricultural lobbyists continued Monday to urge conferees to keep the
Cuba language in the final bill. It "has significant symbolism,"
John Kavulich, the senior policy adviser of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic
Council, said in an e-mail to his membership Monday.
But Kavulich added that members of Congress should not expect an increase
in agricultural exports if the measure becomes law because it would not
repeal the underlying legislation and would not prevent other officials
such as U.S. attorneys from trying to enforce the law.
Kirby Jones, president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade Association, urged his members
in an e-mail Monday evening to continue lobbying because the bill would
not be filed until late today.
"There are some senators who are refusing to sign the bill unless
and until Cuba is resolved," said Jones. By Jerry Hagstrom
