White House Cuba announcement triggers congressional firestorm

The White House’s announcement that it will allow Cuban-Americans to send cell phones to Cuban nationals became an immediate flashpoint in South Florida, where Democrats are challenging a trio of Cuban-American House Republicans.

Joe Garcia, a Democrat running against Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R), called President Bush’s cell phone initiative a sign that the White House realizes Republicans are losing Cuban-American support. That constituency has loyally supported the Republican Party, but Democrats claim they are making inroads.  

{mosads}“They’re in trouble. This is not about Cuban policy,” said Garcia, who circulated a statement on the matter to reporters Wednesday that called the move “political gamesmanship.”

Diaz-Balart, who was at the White House Wednesday for what he described as an intensely emotional ceremony the White House was calling a “Day of Solidarity with the Cuban People,” flatly and hotly disputed that notion, calling Garcia’s action nothing short of offensive to a suffering Cuban people.

“It is really, frankly, sad that a day when the president of the United States, family members of political prisoners… have set aside a day of solidarity with the Cuban people and their suffering that an individual could try to use this occasion to try to further his political ambitions,” Diaz-Balart told The Hill.

The move came amid visits to the Miami area this week by the likely Republican and Democratic presidential candidates, Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.). Both are battling for the vote in Florida, where McCain is now seen as having an edge.

The White House acknowledged that it is in regular contact with McCain and that he was aware of the president’s planned remarks. But White House officials declined to say when McCain was made aware of the plan and disputed any suggestion that the president’s new Cuba initiative was meant to be coordinated with the fiery hard-line Cuba policy speech McCain aimed at Obama this week.

McCain and Obama, who is planning to meet with Cuban groups in Miami on Friday, have already begun intensely sparring over who would be the better president for the Cuban people.

The White House said the initiative, which involves changing regulations housed in the State and Commerce departments, is in no way a change in U.S. policy on the embargo.

But Robert Muse, an attorney specializing in trade relations with Cuba, said it’s hard to see the change as anything but a shift in policy.

Muse said only two types of relative remittances are now allowed by the administration.

Cuban-Americans may send money to a close relative or humanitarian aid, but electronics of any kind are prohibited from being included in care packages, he said.

“To characterize it as not a change in policy is disingenuous,” Muse said.

He also said it could have some political benefit for Republicans regardless of whether that was the intent.

“If you take that issue away from Joe Garcia, then he doesn’t have an issue to run on,” Muse said.

Democrats say they are running serious challengers for the first time against Diaz-Balart, his brother Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.

The three Republicans have portrayed their challengers as soft on Cuba, while Democrats argue the Republican emphasis on Castro has caused the incumbents to lose touch with voters on other issues.  The three Democrats have also criticized tight Bush administration rules on travel and remittances to Cuba, and presented those issues as a difference with the Republicans.

Muse suggested that some Cuban-Americans, who might have been upset over Bush administration regulations on traveling to Cuba, might appreciate the Bush administration’s gesture.

“In that way, there’s some cleverness in it,” he said.

Dan Fisk, the National Security Council senior director for western hemisphere affairs, told reporters Wednesday that the administration was launching the cell phone initiative partly as a “test” of Cuba’s new president, Raul Castro, and his stated commitment to reform.

He said it was completely separate from presidential and congressional campaigns.

Castro said he wanted to bring reforms to Cuba after he was announced as the country’s president earlier this year when his brother was said to be too ill to serve.

In his remarks later in the day, Bush questioned the sincerity of Castro’s commitment to reform, and offered the allowance of cell phones from the U.S. as a test of that commitment.

“If the Cuban regime is serious about improving life for the Cuban people, it will take steps necessary to make these changes meaningful,” Bush said. “Now that the Cuban people can be trusted with mobile phones, they should also be trusted to speak freely in public.”

The White House noted Wednesday that since 2001, the U.S. “has dramatically stepped up our efforts to promote freedom and democracy in Cuba.”

The White House fact sheet says that since that time the U.S. has provided $366 million in assistance and has worked to get “uncensored” information to the Cuban people through radio and TV.

“Today, Cuba remains stuck beneath the personal tyranny of Fidel and Raul Castro, and Cubans’ political freedoms have been denied,” the fact sheet says.

Garcia, however, suggested the administration was being hypocritical. He noted that it imposed tough regulations restricting travel by Cuban-Americans who want to visit relatives on the island 90 miles from Florida’s coast.

 “This is the same administration that doesn’t let you go see your mother if she’s dying or go see your cousin, and now they want you to be able to give them a cell phone?” he said.