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Just months after Tampa International Airport heralded its first charter flights to Cuba in nearly 50 years, the future of not just the flights but all less-restrictive travel to the island nation is threatened.
A proposal in Congress to roll back the Obama administration's broad opening of travel to Cuba has been tethered to a huge, year-end spending bill. Though President Barack Obama opposes the revival of Cuba travel restrictions, legislators on both sides of the aisle say it will be difficult for him to block if it is included in the version of the spending bill that reaches his desk.
U.S. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Miami, inserted the tightened restrictions in July, but they surfaced publicly this week as the spending bill moved through Congress.
Opponents blasted the measure as both ill-conceived and ill-placed, because it's included in a spending bill and not as a separate policy measure.
"We must not go back to the days when sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, and grandsons and granddaughters were unable to visit sick or dying relatives in Cuba," U.S. Rep Kathy Castor, D-Tampa, wrote in a letter to conferees working on legislation.
For the full article, visit the St. Petersburg Times.
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