U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota, predicted that recent bills expanding the U.S. relationship with Cuba would pass “eventually” – but said she didn’t know when eventually would come.
Klobuchar has a hand in two recent high-profile bills, one that would open travel between the U.S. and Cuba and the other that would lift the trade embargo that has existed with the country for decades.
“I’d say that eventually these bills will pass. It’s just a question of when,” she said in an interview Wednesday with the McClatchy Washington Bureau.
And what does “eventually” mean?
“That’s for some of our colleagues to decide,” she said. The travel bill, she added, is the easier one to get done first.
Klobuchar’s legislation, introduced last week with cosponsors from both parties, came two months after the White House announced its plans to normalize relations with Cuba, and two weeks after she joined a group of lawmakers to introduce legislation relaxing travel restrictions between the U.S. and Cuba.
The opening to Cuba is being led by the Obama administration, which has the authority to ease some restrictions on its own. But the major controls on travel and trade are much stronger and reversing them would require congressional action.
Klobuchar comes from an agricultural state, and Cuba experts believe that farm-state lawmakers from both parties could join with a mostly unified Democratic Party to possibly overturn the embargo. But it’s far from certain, and opposition to the opening is intense, led by Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio.
For Klobuchar, the issue is one of markets for Minnesota farmers, as well as avenues for U.S. companies to assist Cuban farmers expanding their own production. She just returned from a trip to the island with other senators and said the “people there just seemed very eager to move forward.”
“There are 11 million people 90 miles off our shores who could buy our goods,” she said.
Asked her thoughts on the view of Rubio and other opponents that human rights – not economics – should drive the debate, Klobuchar said it wasn’t an either-or situation.
Both issues are important, she said.
“But I believe that when you have 50 years of a certain policy that hasn’t worked to bring change, then it’s time to try something new,” she said.