Congress to Lift the Travel Ban to Cuba?

Bloomberg News reports today that the U.S. House may pass a bill by the end of the year lifting the almost five-decade-old ban on travel to Cuba by American citizens. The step is long overdue. According to the article:

A group of House and Senate lawmakers proposed in March ending restrictions to allow all U.S. citizens and residents to travel to Cuba. [Rep. Sam Farr, a California Democrat] said the legislation, known as the “Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act,” also has enough votes to clear the Senate, where Senator Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat, and Republican Senator Michael Enzi of Wyoming introduced the legislation.

As Rep. Farr succinctly added, “If you are a potato, you can get to Cuba very easily, but if you are a person, you can’t, and that is our problem.”

“If you are a potato, you can get to Cuba very easily,” he said. “But if you are a person, you can’t, and that is our problem.”

I rebut a lot of what Sen. Dorgan has said about free trade and globalization in my new book, Mad about Trade, but on the issue of the Cuban embargo and travel ban, Sen. Dorgan and most of his fellow Democrats are pushing in the right direction, while most Republicans still vote to maintain our failed policies. For more on why the travel ban and embargo should be lifted, read my speech at Rice University in 2005.

Here is one issue where those of use who support less government and more economic freedom really can hope for progressive change.