Obama’s Cuba Tourism Blunder

With the announcement this week of federal regulations governing President Barack Obama’s alterations in U.S.-Cuba policy, it is clear the administration is continuing its bad habit of using executive action to circumvent laws it simply doesn’t like.

Of course, the administration believes it is on rock-solid legal ground in implementing changes to Cuba policy, but its failure to implement appropriate oversight or enforcement mechanisms to ensure the initiatives meet the congressional threshold of “supporting the Cuba people” means we are merely placing our trust primarily in the good will of the Castro regime and others to allow that to happen.

The question of the law is raised because unlike other U.S. sanctions against rogue regimes, the U.S. embargo of Cuba was codified by Congress in 1996 to prevent precisely this: a U.S. administration loosening economic restrictions — and thereby forfeiting U.S. leverage — for dubious reasons. (Obama lived up to the moment, in particular, by receiving nothing in return for his changes to U.S. policy.)

Openings for “supporting the Cuba people” have been a critical part of U.S. policy towards Cuba for years; it’s just that conditions have existed to secure those outcomes. Diminishing those conditions is a principal reason why the new measures have generated such a negative reaction from critics on Capitol Hill. The White House simply saying, “Trust us” is not the most confidence-inspiring assurance.

The issuance of new travel regulations to Cuba for U.S. citizens is particularly egregious. Again, so-called purposeful travel to Cuba has existed for years. It holds that U.S. citizens can travel to Cuba under a range of categories that exclude tourism. That travel was regulated by the Treasury Department to ensure there was no abuse of the regulations (although under Obama, enforcement was increasingly lax).

What we learned this week is that not only is Obama expanding categories for travel, but they are eliminating any oversight or enforcement of travel to Cuba. In other words, would-be travelers will “self-police” themselves to decide whether their trips to Cuba are “in support of the Cuban people.” So, even though the administration says all the right things about solemnly adhering to the law against tourism, it has no intention of ensuring that congressional intent on supporting the Cuban people is met. Once again, the administration is content to bask in acclamation for its good intentions without any regard for the real-world outcomes.

Whatever one thinks about the U.S. government preventing tourist travel to any country, in the case of Cuba it is the law, and only Congress can change that law. It is a law meant to deny desperately needed hard currency to a repressive and recalcitrant military government that answered Obama’s extended hand with a boast that it had “won the war” and that it had no intention of changing. (And indeed, it followed through on that pledge in the days after the president’s December announcement, arresting scores of dissidents.)

The Obama administration is using subterfuge and pretense to seek a wholesale revision of U.S.-policy towards Cuba that he cannot legally accomplish absent Congressional action. A response of “so sue me” is beneath the dignity of any U.S. president and sets a dangerous precedent. Indeed, all those cheering on the president’s actions should be think twice about the prospect of a future president acting similarly towards laws they happen to agree with.

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