By Les Blumenthal. Scripps-McClatchy Western Service. July 06, 2000. KnoxNews.com
WASHINGTON - In bucking House Republican leadership and forcing a historic compromise to end a four-decade ban on the sale of food to Cuba and other rogue nations, Rep. George Nethercutt, R-Wash., said he was doing it for his farmers back home.
But Nethercutt also faces a potentially tough re-election campaign in his sprawling eastern Washington district, and critics say he had his own political survival as much in mind as potential markets for U.S. agricultural products when he brokered the compromise.
And some, including Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said Nethercutt's proposal may actually fail to open Cuba and such other countries as Iran, North Korea, Libya and Sudan to such Washington state exports as wheat and apples.
"He's looking for an issue he can make a difference on," said Murray. "It's a political year and this is obviously important in his district."
The Senate is expected to take up its version of the agricultural spending bill when it returns next week, but the issue will most likely be resolved by House and Senate negotiators.
Nethercutt doesn't deny that politics played a role in seeking the compromise, but "when you believe deeply in something, you care less about the secondary consequences. I had no choice but to fight for what I believe. Capitulation wasn't an option."
Nethercutt gained national attention in 1994 by unseating then-House Speaker Tom Foley. As part of his campaign, Nethercutt promised to serve only three .
The congressman, however, has decided to seek another term in a move that has angered term-limit ers.
U.S. Term Limits, a national group, has said it will spend $1 million on ads attacking Nethercutt for breaking his promise
In late June when he sat down with House Republican leaders and lawmakers representing the anti-Castro Cuban-American community in Florida to negotiate a compromise on his sanctions proposal, Nethercutt reportedly made it clear he felt his re-election was at stake.
"He just sat there and whined and complained the whole night saying, 'I'm going to lose, I'm going to lose, I'm going to get clobbered in November,'" one unidentified participant at the meeting told The Hill newspaper, adding Nethercutt told his colleagues the compromise was his "return
ticket" to the House next year.
Democrats, anxious to take back control of the House, consider Nethercutt one of the most vulnerable Republicans and said his effort on the Cuban sanctions was nothing more than a "politically motivated fig leaf" designed to attract from farmers, a key voting bloc in his
district.
"Nethercutt is desperately searching for a way to stop his political hemorrhaging," said John Del Cecato, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
As a member of the House agriculture appropriations subcommittee, Nethercutt originally had inserted a provision lifting the food and medicine sanctions against Cuba and other countries that have ed international terrorism.
Nethercutt said removing the sanctions could result in $200 million worth of agriculture exports from Washington state to Cuba annually and another $700 million in soft white wheat exports from the state to Iran.
But Nethercutt had taken on such powerful Republicans as House GOP whip Tom DeLay of Texas and others who opposed Castro and didn't want to risk offending the Cuban-American community in an election year.
In hopes of avoiding a major fight on the House floor, the Republican leaders decided to seek a compromise with Nethercutt.
Nethercutt said the talks were intense and emotional, and he didn't deny that his re-election campaign came up.
"In negotiations you use whatever weapons you have, being straight-forward and empathetic about it from a political level and a policy level," he said.
While the compromise lifts the sanctions, at the insistence of anti-Castro Republicans it prohibits the federal government or U.S. banks or other private lenders from financing the sales to cash-strapped Cuba, Iran and other countries. Farmers would have to go to foreign lenders, or "offshore,"
to secure financing to guarantee the sales.
Murray said Nethercutt's compromise falls far short of a proposal that ed the Senate by 70 votes last year and allowed for financing by U.S. banks.
"Financing is the real issue," she said. "This won't result in the export of any Washington state agriculture products to Cuba or Iran. If it's cash only, it's questionable whether we will be able to make any sales."
Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., agreed with Murray, calling Nethercutt's compromise a "legislative hoax" and circulating a letter asking his colleagues to allowing government or private financing.
Dorgan said Nethercutt's compromise will "not achieve the objective of opening markets to our farmers."
Gretchen Borck, issues director for the Washington Association of Wheat Growers, said that with 12 percent of the world's market shut off to U.S. agriculture exports, Nethercutt's bill was definitely a step in the right direction.
"It is a little restrictive on the financing, but we will work with it," she said, adding she wouldn't be surprised if a little politics was mixed in with the compromise. "Politics had to be involved. It happened in Washington, D.C."
Nethercutt concedes that the financing provisions may be difficult under his compromise, but he said it was best he could do under difficult circumstances.
"This has been a priority of mine for three years," Nethercutt said. "This is the first step. If we didn't open the door it would have stayed closed."
(Les Blumenthal is a Washington reporter for Scripps-McClatchy Western Service.)
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