[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 128 (Monday, July 29, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5143-S5147]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          STATEMENTS ON INTRODUCED BILLS AND JOINT RESOLUTIONS

      By Mr. LEAHY (for himself, Ms. Baldwin, Mr. Bennet, Mr. 
        Blumenthal, Mr. Boozman, Mr. Brown, Ms. Cantwell, Mr. Cardin, 
        Mr. Carper, Mr. Casey, Ms. Collins, Mr. Coons, Ms. Duckworth, 
        Mr. Durbin, Mr. Enzi, Mrs. Feinstein, Mrs. Gillibrand, Ms. 
        Harris, Ms. Hassan, Mr. Heinrich, Ms. Hirono, Mr. Jones, Mr. 
        Kaine, Mr. King, Ms. Klobuchar, Mr. Manchin, Mr. Markey, Mr. 
        Merkley, Mr. Moran, Mr. Murphy, Mrs. Murray, Mr. Peters, Mr. 
        Reed, Mr. Sanders, Mr. Schatz, Mr. Schumer, Mrs. Shaheen, Ms. 
        Smith, Ms. Stabenow, Mr. Tester, Mr. Udall, Mr. Van Hollen, Mr. 
        Warner, Ms. Warren, Mr. Whitehouse, and Mr. Wyden):
  S. 2303. A bill to allow United States citizens and legal residents 
to travel between the United States and Cuba; to the Committee on 
Foreign Relations.
  Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I am here today to talk about America's 
highway infrastructure. It is important to every State. I have just 
come back from Wyoming, and it clearly is important in my home State. 
It is important in every community. It is important in every Tribe in 
the country. I see that week after week in Wyoming. Our roads, our 
bridges, our highways, our tunnels support America's economic growth 
and our competitiveness. The Presiding Officer, from his home State of 
Missouri, knows this as well. These are an essential part, really, of 
everyday life for all of America.
  We use the infrastructure. We use the roads, the bridges, the 
tunnels. We use them when we drive to work, when we head to school or 
we head off to summer vacation. Our economy is built on a well-
functioning road system that allows products from rural areas to get 
transported to population centers. They are used to ship American-made 
products and goods from one coast to the other.
  Certainly in Wyoming, we see a lot of goods coming in then being 
transported from the coast in California to Chicago, with truck after 
truck going

[[Page S5144]]

through Wyoming. Interstates, like I-80 in my home State of Wyoming, 
are critical arteries for commerce in this country. Our roads create 
jobs. They move products, and they keep our country running and going 
strong.
  In 2015, the U.S. transportation system moved a daily average of 
about 49 million tons of freight; that is, a daily average of 49 
million tons of freight worth more than $53 billion--every single day. 
Our roads and our bridges have to keep pace. These systems are vital to 
our country, and they need to be taken care of. We must maintain, 
upgrade, and, when necessary, build new ones.
  Since his election, President Trump has called on Congress to act on 
infrastructure. Last year, Congress answered the President's call by 
passing America's Water Infrastructure Act. He signed it into law. It 
passed this body 99 to 1. The legislation helped streamline major 
projects and helped keep communities safe. It made a significant 
investment in our Nation's dams and our locks and our ports and in 
drinking water systems.
  Now is the time to do the same for our roads and for our bridges. 
That is why, today, I am introducing America's Transportation 
Infrastructure Act, and I am doing it along with my fellow leaders of 
the Environment and Public Works Committee, Ranking Member Carper and 
Senators Capito and Cardin.
  This legislation will make a historic investment in our roads. It 
will cut Washington redtape. It will improve safety and will help grow 
our economy. America's Transportation Infrastructure Act authorizes 
$287 billion over 5 years from the highway trust fund. Of that money, 
$259 billion will go directly to the States through the highway formula 
funding process. This is the largest investment in America's roads in 
any highway bill ever passed by Congress. The legislation will help the 
entire country. It will ensure both rural and urban areas have access 
to funding.
  Formula funding gives each State the flexibility it needs to address 
specific surface transportation needs. The formula-based approach has a 
proven track record of efficiently delivering infrastructure money 
directly to the States. America's Transportation Infrastructure Act 
maintains this important approach so that States will get the funds 
they need faster.
  America's Transportation Infrastructure Act also continues successful 
Federal loan programs, such as the Transportation Infrastructure 
Finance and Innovation Act, which many people in the business know as 
TIFIA. TIFIA and programs like it get taxpayers significant bang for 
their buck. A single taxpayer dollar in the TIFIA program can be 
leveraged 40 times that much in terms of infrastructure spending.
  Between new authorizations, leveraging within Federal loan programs, 
with State-match requirements and likely additions from the Commerce 
and Banking Committees, our bill's total impact on infrastructure will 
be nearly one-half trillion dollars--a historic high. With these 
investments, it is critical for us to speed up government approvals for 
important projects.
  Last Congress, the Environment and Public Works Committee heard 
testimony about a highway safety project that I am very familiar with 
in Wyoming--and not too far from where the Presiding Officer lives--
near the interstate north of Sheridan, between Sheridan and Montana. It 
took a decade to get the permits but actually took only months to 
build. That has to stop. This was a safety project linking our States 
together. It was held up for 10 years because of Washington permits. It 
is unacceptable. America's Transportation Infrastructure Act cuts 
Washington redtape so projects can get done faster, better, cheaper, 
and smarter. President Trump has set a goal for his administration of 
completing environmental reviews for projects within 2 years. It is a 
goal that I applaud, and the policy is called One Federal Decision.

  Our legislation makes key elements of that policy into law. Instead 
of several Federal agencies having duplicate requirements on the same 
project, the process is simplified because it needs to be simplified. 
Our bill gives States increased flexibility so that Federal approvals 
can get moving and so that project construction can get started. It 
also reduces the amount of paperwork that is needed from the States to 
complete a project. Our legislation gets long delayed safety projects 
moving faster. Washington shouldn't prioritize paperwork over people's 
safety, but that has happened in the past, and it is unacceptable.
  America's Transportation Infrastructure Act makes road safety a top 
priority. It supports innovative research and technology deployment, 
including new construction technologies that will make roads safer and 
will expedite project delivery. For example, the bill supports 
technologies that allow construction projects to be managed digitally. 
That will enable project managers to better track projects from design 
through operation.
  The Presiding Officer knows this and sees it, and I saw it this past 
weekend. When a car collides with an animal on a highway, the results 
can be dramatic and sometimes even deadly for both the animal and for 
the driver. Our bill creates a pilot program to build wildlife highway 
crossings to minimize the danger of vehicle-wildlife collisions.
  Across the country, aging bridges are in need of maintenance. Our 
bill establishes a competitive grant program to help address the 
backlogs of bridges that are in poor condition. Our bill establishes a 
new program to incentivize States to lower the total number of 
fatalities with there being a special focus on pedestrian deaths, which 
are on the rise.
  Of course, the climate is changing, and humans have a collective 
responsibility to do something about it. I believe that American 
innovation, not government regulation and taxation, is the answer to 
our addressing a changing climate. Our bill includes a climate change 
title that ensures the durability of our transportation infrastructure, 
and our bill provides flexible resources to help States reduce carbon 
emissions. It helps States build more resilient highways. We want to 
make sure that our roads and our bridges are built to withstand extreme 
weather events, like hurricanes and floods, or natural disasters, like 
wildfires, earthquakes, and rockslides.
  The legislation also helps to reduce transportation-related carbon 
emissions. The very successful bill that had been signed into law 
previously and is expiring, the Diesel Emissions Reduction Act, is a 
program that has helped communities in Wyoming and Montana to replace 
aging school buses and public equipment. The Diesel Emissions Reduction 
Act helps to reduce black carbon emissions. This is one of the biggest 
contributors to climate change. Our bill reauthorizes this program, and 
it supports innovation. Carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration 
technologies hold the key to major emissions reductions. I have 
introduced the USE IT Act, along with my colleagues in the Senate, to 
support this important research, and it is included in this bill.
  As I have stated, this is bipartisan legislation. It doesn't just 
include Republican priorities; it includes Democratic priorities as 
well. For example, this legislation establishes grant programs to help 
fund the construction of electric vehicle charging stations and 
infrastructure for other alternative fuel vehicles, such as natural 
gas. This provision has been a priority for several Senators, including 
for Ranking Member Carper.
  My priority is to make sure these vehicles are actually contributing 
to the maintenance of our roads. With a rapidly growing electric 
vehicle market, it is necessary to make sure drivers of these 
alternative fuel vehicles are contributing to road maintenance. Nearly 
every automaker is ramping up electric vehicle production. Right now, 
none of these vehicles pay to maintain America's roads. How can that 
be? The highway trust fund is funded through fuel taxes. Because they 
don't buy gasoline, these vehicles simply do not contribute. Yet 
electric vehicles do as much damage to our highways as do traditional 
gas-powered vehicles. Everyone who drives on our Nation's roads should 
contribute to the cost of road maintenance.
  Our bill is bipartisan, substantial, and needs to be paid for. As the 
Presiding Officer knows, the Committee on Environment and Public Works 
doesn't have jurisdiction over revenues for the highway bill. Ranking 
Member Carper and I are going to work closely

[[Page S5145]]

with Senate Finance Chairman Chuck Grassley and Ranking Member Ron 
Wyden to responsibly pay for this legislation.
  In the process of writing this legislation, we have received 
extensive feedback from experts from our home States and from other 
Senators. The bill has already received broad support from groups like 
the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, 
the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of 
Manufacturers, the American Highway Users Alliance, the American Road & 
Transportation Builders Association, the American Council of 
Engineering Companies, the National Stone, Sand and Gravel Association, 
the North American Concrete Alliance, and many more.
  We have planned to mark up America's Transportation Infrastructure 
Act this week. The business meeting will be a great opportunity in 
which to strengthen the legislation and move this important process 
forward. I am thankful to Ranking Member Carper and to all of the 
members of our committee for working with me on this important piece of 
legislation. America's Transportation Infrastructure Act will grow the 
Nation's economy, will improve the safety of our roads, and will 
enhance the quality of life for the American people.
  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I rise today to discuss America's 
Transportation Infrastructure Act, legislation that I introduced today 
with the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, John 
Barrasso, along with our subcommittee chair on Transportation and 
Infrastructure, Shelley Moore Capito, and our ranking member from 
Maryland, Ben Cardin.
  Our legislation reauthorizes our Nation's surface transportation laws 
and makes a historic $287 billion investment in our Nation's roads, 
highways, and bridges. Our Nation's first highway bill was enacted just 
a few years after the world's first concrete highway was paved outside 
of Detroit, MI. Henry Ford had just introduced the Model T, and the 
first stop-go traffic light would soon be installed at the intersection 
of East 105th Street and Euclid Avenue in Cleveland, OH.
  A century ago, the idea of speedy and safe transcontinental travel 
was beyond our imagination and even further from being realized. We 
have come a long way since then.
  Today, more than 4 million miles of roadway and 600,000 bridges help 
link our country together. Some 220,000 of those miles combine to make 
up our national highway system. Our transportation infrastructure is 
essential to America's economy, to our society, and to our way of life. 
It connects us to commerce; it connects us to service; and, more 
importantly, it connects us to one another.
  The sad truth, however, is that, as we all know too well, many of 
these roads, highways, and bridges are in poor condition today. They 
have been in use far beyond, for many of them, the intended duration of 
their original design. A great many roadways and bridges simply need 
repaving, while some need repairs, and others need to be completely 
redesigned.
  According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, approximately 20 
percent of our Federal-aid roadways are in poor condition, as are 
47,000 bridges. That is in large part because, for far too long, our 
Nation's highway trust fund has been operating on the brink of 
insolvency. The highway account is running at an $11 billion deficit, 
and that deficit is growing.
  Meanwhile, despite spending more from the fund than we collect, we 
still aren't spending enough to make a dent in the $800 billion backlog 
of investments needed to significantly improve conditions on many of 
the roads, highways, and bridges that millions of Americans--all of 
us--use and depend on every day.
  All of this has contributed to an unacceptable level of uncertainty 
for States, for cities, for businesses, and for families. It has 
prevented us, as a nation, from addressing serious challenges across 
our transportation infrastructure that go well beyond simply filling 
potholes.
  For too long, we have failed to make meaningful progress in America 
toward improving safety, easing traffic congestion, reducing harmful 
emissions, and enhancing resilience. We can do better than this. The 
legislation that is before us today, if enacted, will help put our 
country back on the right track. I am excited about it, and I am 
grateful to everyone who has contributed in ways both large and small 
to the drafting of the legislation that Senator Barrasso and I have 
introduced today.
  While this bill will leverage badly needed investments in rebuilding 
our roads, highways, and bridges, it will do a lot more than that. It 
will help expedite the movement of people and goods throughout our 
country. It will support the creation of hundreds of thousands of jobs 
here too. It will help alleviate some of the congestion we face in 
urban and suburban parts of all 50 States--areas across the country--on 
an almost daily basis.
  America's Transportation Infrastructure Act will help make real the 
vision of a safer, more connected, efficient, and climate-friendly 
transportation system, one that will endure the test of time and keep 
up with the evolving demands of the world's biggest economy. Our bill 
is a good start. Now we need to build on it and make it better.
  With respect to safety, too many pedestrians and bicyclists put their 
lives at risk every day when they use our roadways. In 2017, there were 
more than 37,000--37,000--fatalities on our Nation's roadways, 
including approximately 7,000 nonmotorized users. Think about that: 
37,000 fatalities. That is more than all of the people who live in 
Dover, DE, or in Laramie, WY.
  After trending down for many years, in the last decade pedestrian 
deaths have increased sharply and are now at a 25-year high. In Tribal 
communities, that fatality rate is even higher. That is just 
unacceptable.
  Our legislation addresses this carnage by investing $2.5 billion in 
Federal funds per year in safety improvements and by compelling States 
and cities with very high rates of pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities 
to do their share as well.
  Our legislation also expands funding for bike paths, sidewalks, and 
other transportation alternatives to $1.2 billion per year. It empowers 
States and cities to design, implement, and manage those projects so 
they are better designed to fit the needs of those States and cities.
  Too many Americans simply don't have safe places to walk or bike. In 
some cases, we build roads in ways that make it impossible for people 
to walk or bicycle where they need to go, be it a grocery store, a 
daycare center, a health facility--you name it.
  America's transportation infrastructure should connect us, not divide 
us. Let me say that again. America's transportation infrastructure 
should connect us, not divide us. It should foster greater economic 
opportunity, not disparity.
  Our legislation seeks to improve connectivity and accessibility by 
establishing a pilot program for States and cities to measure access to 
destinations like hospitals, schools, and grocery stores. Our bill also 
funds a program to help remove barriers, such as chronically underused 
highways--when appropriate--that create obstacles to access and 
mobility.
  But an even more pressing need to address throughout America is the 
roads, highways, and bridges that are actually overcapacity today, 
where cars and trucks and their passengers sit for hours in traffic. 
Last year, every American driver lost, on average, 97 hours due to 
traffic congestion. That is 97 hours for the average driver per year. 
That is 4 days. It is not just a nuisance for drivers; last year, it 
cost our country $87 billion in lost productivity--$87 billion. Let's 
not forget that all that time we waste sitting in our cars and trucks 
also degrades the quality of the air we breathe, increases the cost of 
our healthcare, and raises the cost of the goods we buy.
  Our legislation addresses this predicament by authorizing additional 
funding for the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Program, which 
has been used to build carpool lanes and support a number of other 
alternatives to reduce congestion.
  In addition, our legislation recognizes that in many places, it is 
just not possible to build additional lanes, so we need to address 
congestion by managing travel demand through innovative technology, 
transit, and tolling. That is why we have also created a new

[[Page S5146]]

program for our largest cities to provide new tools--new tools--to help 
address congestion challenges.
  That brings us to the evermore apparent reality of climate change and 
its ever-worsening impact on, among other things, our infrastructure. 
The cars, trucks, and vans that we drive have become our Nation's 
largest source of carbon dioxide emissions, accelerating and 
exacerbating the effects of climate change and bringing with it 
increasingly extreme weather that we are witnessing throughout the 
world on an almost daily basis. For example, in Europe last week, 
temperatures exceeded 110 degrees Fahrenheit. And we have examples here 
too. We have just come off of the hottest 4 years in the history of 
this country since we have been measuring it, and this year looks like 
it is going to be the hottest yet. We have to do more than fight, and 
with this legislation, we will.
  I am proud to announce that America's Transportation Infrastructure 
Act includes the first-ever climate title in a transportation bill in 
the history of Congress. Our legislation calls for investing $10 
billion over the next 5 years directly in programs and policies that 
will combat climate change by reducing emissions and improving the 
resiliency of our transportation networks and infrastructure.
  One such program is a $1 billion investment in charging and fueling 
stations for electric and alternative fuel vehicles traveling in 
heavily traveled corridors across America. While Henry Ford's Model T 
and its internal combustion engine are an important part of our 
country's transportation system, zero-emission electric vehicles 
represent our future.
  Unfortunately, in most parts of America today, drivers lack 
reasonable access to charging or fueling stations for electric or 
hydrogen-fueled vehicles. Our legislation helps to address that concern 
by creating competitive grants for States and localities to build 
hydrogen, natural gas, and electric vehicle charging and fueling 
infrastructure along many of America's most heavily traveled highway 
corridors.
  Meanwhile, increasingly frequent and extreme weather events continue 
to erode our transportation networks, and sea level rise threatens the 
structural integrity and longevity of our surface transportation 
infrastructure. We see that happening now in my home State of Delaware, 
along major portions of the East Coast, and in the flooding that has 
occurred in the heartland of our country. It has been reported in the 
news that in some places in America, the temperature has been so hot 
that the asphalt roads and highways are bubbling up from the heat. Try 
driving through that.
  Our legislation seeks to help address these threats by investing 
nearly $5 billion over 5 years in a new formula program available to 
all States and a competitive resiliency grant program. Both the formula 
program and the new PROTECT Grants Program would support projects 
across America that reinforce, upgrade, or realign existing 
transportation infrastructure to better withstand extreme weather 
events and the effects of climate change, like the record-setting 
temperatures I have spoken of.
  Let me briefly mention one other thing. Through the use of natural 
infrastructure, like the marshes and wetlands that protect roads from 
storm surges during tropical cyclones and Nor'easters, our bill also 
helps harness the power of Mother Nature to improve the resilience of 
transportation projects.
  That gives you at least a glimpse of some of the exciting aspects of 
the legislation our committee chairman, John Barrasso, and I are 
introducing today, again with the help of a lot of people on our 
committee, throughout the Senate--Democrats and Republicans--and from 
all parts of this country. We introduced our legislation with their 
help and help from every corner of the country, and it comes from State 
and local governments as well.
  In the coming months, I look forward to sharing more stories about 
how the America's Transportation Infrastructure Act can tackle 
complicated issues, improve our daily lives, and help us build the 
roads, highways, and bridges of the future.
  As bright as the chairman and I are on our committee--and our very 
able staff members like to think we are--I am confident that our bill 
can be improved as it moves through the legislative process in the 
months ahead. As I oftentimes say, if it isn't perfect, let's make it 
better. As good as what we have done is--and we are proud of our 
handiwork--we know it can be better, and we look forward to making it 
better. That begins tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. with a markup in the 
Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.
  Before I close, I would be remiss if I failed to remind everyone that 
with respect to surface infrastructure, the 800-pound gorilla in the 
room is almost always, how are we going to pay for the improvements and 
the programs we all know we need? The fact is, as I have said, the 
highway trust fund is going broke, and, if we are honest with one 
another, our way of paying for it is broken too. So what should we do 
about it?
  It is important to note that our legislation will continue to fund 
the State-level vehicle-miles-traveled pilot programs established in 
the 2015 bill. I am especially pleased, however, that our legislation 
also includes a national vehicle-miles-traveled pilot program--the 
first of its kind. I believe that user fee-based approaches are 
generally the best way to fund our Nation's surface transportation 
system and that vehicle-miles-traveled systems, which seek to ensure 
that all road users pay their fair share, are the future.
  In the meantime, there needs to be a bridge to that future, and that 
bridge will not rely on a silver bullet but on what I refer to as a lot 
of silver BBs, some of which are bigger than others.
  With that, let me conclude by reiterating that Chairman Barrasso and 
I look forward to working closely with our colleagues on the Senate 
Finance Committee--a committee on which I am privileged to serve--to 
ensure that this bill is responsibly paid for.
  I have already begun to meet with several of our colleagues on the 
relevant committees of jurisdiction, and I am anxious to work with them 
and all of our colleagues as we face not just the dawning challenges 
that lie ahead but the opportunities as well.
  Winston Churchill once said, ``You can always count on America to do 
the right thing in the end, after trying everything else.'' If we pull 
together and work together in the House and Senate, as I believe we 
tend to do in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, then 
we can reach that end a good deal sooner than Mr. Churchill and a lot 
of the skeptics might otherwise expect. So why don't we show those 
skeptics what we can do? A great many Americans are counting on us to 
do just that, and we can't let them down.
  Again, I thank my staff, the staff of our Chairman Barrasso, and the 
staff of Senators Capito, Ben Cardin, and others on our committee for 
their excellent work and for negotiating in good faith throughout this 
year. Their spirit and dogged commitment are a big part of what brought 
us to where we are today.
  But we all know that the introduction of a solid bipartisan bill, 
even when it is followed the next day by a successful markup, we hope, 
in committee--we must acknowledge that it is just the beginning, but it 
is a good start, one that we and our colleagues can and I hope will 
build on, enabling us and America to seize the day. I don't know a lot 
of Latin, but I think Latin for ``seize the day'' is ``carpe diem,'' or 
as we say in Delaware, ``Carper diem.''
  Thank you.
  Mr. LEAHY. Today I am introducing, along with 45 Democratic and 
Republican cosponsors, the Freedom for Americans to Travel to Cuba Act 
of 2019. Identical legislation was introduced on July 25th by 
Representatives Jim McGovern and Tom Emmer in the House.
  We are introducing this bill for one reason: so Americans can travel 
to Cuba in the same way that they can travel to every other country in 
the world except North Korea, to which President Trump banned travel by 
executive order. Based on my conversations with other Senators, I am 
confident that if we were afforded the opportunity to vote on this 
bill, more than 60 Senators would support it.
  It is indefensible that the Federal government restricts American 
citizens and legal residents from traveling to a tiny country 90 miles 
away that poses no threat to us. At a time when

[[Page S5147]]

U.S. airlines are flying to Cuba, does anyone here honestly think that 
preventing Americans from traveling there is an appropriate role of the 
Federal government? Why only Cuba? Why not Venezuela? Or Russia? Or 
Iran, or anywhere else? It is a vindictive, discriminatory, self-
defeating vestige of a time long passed.
  This bill would end these Cold War restrictions on the freedom of 
Americans to travel. It would not do away with the embargo.
  Americans overwhelmingly favor travel to Cuba. The last poll I saw, a 
CBS poll, found that 81 percent of Americans support expanding travel 
to Cuba. Officials in the White House, however, have a different 
agenda, driven by purely domestic political calculations. They have not 
only rolled back steps taken by the previous administration to 
encourage engagement with Cuba, they have gone further by imposing even 
more onerous restrictions on the right of Americans to travel. As a 
result, the number of Americans traveling to Cuba this year is 
projected to plummet by half, due to the policies of their own 
government. And the thousands of private Cuban entrepreneurs, the taxi 
drivers, the Airbnb renters, restaurants, and shops that depend on 
American customers are struggling to survive. It is a shortsighted, 
anachronistic policy that is beneath our democracy.
  I and others, including Republicans, have traveled to Cuba many times 
over the past 20 years, met with Cuban officials, with Cubans who have 
been persecuted for opposing the government, and with many others. 
Every one of us wants to see an end to political repression in Cuba. 
The arrests and mistreatment of dissidents by the Cuban government 
should be condemned, just as we should condemn such abuses by other 
governments including some, like Egypt and Turkey, whose leaders have 
been welcomed at the White House and the State Department. Americans 
can travel freely to Egypt, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, but not to Cuba.
  The issue is how best to support the people of Cuba who struggle to 
make ends meet, and who want to live in a country where freedom of 
expression and association are protected. Anyone who thinks that more 
economic pressure, or ultimatums, will force the Cuban authorities to 
stop arresting political dissidents and embrace democracy have learned 
nothing from history. For more than half a century we tried a policy of 
unilateral sanctions and isolation, and it achieved neither of those 
goals. Instead, it is the Cuban people who were hurt the most. And it 
provided an opening in this hemisphere for Russia, China, and our other 
competitors.
  Change is coming to Cuba, and we can help support that process. Or we 
can sit on the sidelines and falsely claim to be helping the Cuban 
people, while pursuing a failed policy of punitive sanctions. The 
bipartisan bill I am introducing is about the right of Americans, not 
Cubans, to travel. Every member of Congress, especially those who have 
been to Cuba, should oppose restrictions on American citizens that have 
no place in the law books of a free society.

                          ____________________