Congress stalls as Obama prepares for Cuba visit

MIAMI — As President Obama prepares for a historic trip to Cuba next week to narrow the remaining gap between longtime enemies, Congress appears unlikely to get on board.

The biggest obstacle that remains is an economic embargo on Cuba that only Congress can lift, but action on that front before this year's elections appears unlikely.

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More than a half-dozen bills to amend or repeal the embargo are floating through Congress. They have widespread support among Democrats and are slowly picking up GOP backers. Still, with election season in full swing and few willing to make major changes before a new Congress is seated, those hoping for a dramatic change in Cuba policy are running out of time.

"I don't think it'll happen before the presidential election," said Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., who filed a bill to repeal the embargo and will join Obama on his trip to the communist country.

After Obama announced in December 2014 that he would end the five-decade political freeze with Cuba, American business leaders, politicians and government officials have flooded the isolated country. That initial wave of enthusiasm has given way to a more cautious approach. Cuba's communist leadership has been slow to embrace the new economic opportunities or take steps to provide political freedoms. Congressional leaders cite that lack of change as the reason to not fully normalize ties.

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Klobuchar and a growing number of Republicans have been trying to convince enough colleagues to weaken or repeal the embargo.

Republicans in both chambers have filed a bill to allow any American to travel to Cuba — current law forbids travel there solely as a tourist. GOP lawmakers have backed bills allowing more U.S. businesses to export their products to Cuba and help build the island's crumbling telecommunications infrastructure.

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Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Minn., who has twice traveled to Cuba and will also join Obama on his trip there, said his GOP colleagues are starting to pay more attention and move past the "cold warrior mentality" that has dominated congressional thinking for decades.

"Even though it is threading the eye of a needle ... I do believe there is still an opportunity to lift the embargo in total," said Emmer, who has filed a bill to expand trade with Cuba.

The most difficult part is convincing the GOP leadership in Congress to schedule votes on the bills.

Marc Hanson, senior associate for Cuba at the Washington Office on Latin America, a research organization that advocates for human rights in the region, said he's targeting Republicans who could support the bills. They include libertarians who don't like the government forbidding Americans from traveling wherever they want, free-market Republicans who don't like the government restricting trade and lawmakers from states where agricultural companies could benefit from exports to an island that can't produce enough food for its 11 million citizens.

Hanson said his group has been able to win over Republicans even though Obama has made little effort to court them. He said the White House has been too scarred by other brutal battles with Congress in recent years. "I keep thinking there's a tipping point (of support) coming, but I don't know what it is exactly," Hanson said.

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Mauricio Claver-Carone doesn't believe getting a majority in Congress to lift the embargo is possible.

The Washington director for the U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC, which favors the embargo, said widespread support remains for choking off U.S. funding that could keep the Castro regime in power.

He said Republicans have flirted with changing the embargo in the past, most notably in the early 2000s. Back then, a bipartisan Cuba Working Group in Congress had more than 50 members. A recently reincarnated Cuba Working Group has just six Republicans and six Democrats.

"They're actually in a worse position than they've ever been," Claver-Carone said.

Still, Klobuchar and Emmer say public opinion is on their side, and the embargo's days are numbered.

"You don't hear Cuba being discussed in the Republican (presidential) debates. It's not that kind of radioactive issue," Klobuchar said. "I can see something happening in the lame duck or next year."