I had a meeting with my friend from the Cuban Embassy the other day. He is a nice chap who comes in periodically to discuss the merits of removing the travel restrictions to Cuba.
Until recently I haven't really had an opinion on travel restrictions to Cuba. Recently, however, I have been in a few meetings on the subject.
There is the Cuban cigar company that is not advocating a timetable for regime change, but when it happens they are concerned about the taxes on their cigars. There is the Congresswoman who wants to keep the travel ban and the Chairman of the committee of jurisdiction who wants to remove the travel ban. There are the Embassy folks who cannot travel outside the beltway and then there’s me… who just sits and takes notes.
So back to my embassy chum. He came to see me about general US/Cuban relations. We got to chatting and it came time in our meeting, as happens in every meeting I have, (Hint to lobbyists and advocacy groups everywhere - if you come to the Hill, bring handouts.) to leave me with a nifty one pager on the issue. (These handy one pagers get put in a really big pile on my shelf and every 6 months or so I go through them and file them... 6 months after that I go through them again and throw them out. sorry.) So Embassy guy opens his brief case. The brief case is situated on the couch so when he opens it I can see everything that is in the case. But get this, THERE IS NOTHING IN THERE! Seriously, he pulled out the ONE page summary of the bill he wanted me to take a look at, and that was it. There were not pens, papers, pads of paper, water, ID, nothing. Zilch, bubkis, nada. It was so odd.
Odd, odd, odd.
So I'm leaning to removing the travel ban. Our restrictions haven't done much in the way of reform for the last 40 years, so how about we try something new, eh?
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