Freedom to Export to Cuba Act is the right move for Kansas farmers, U.S. and Cuba

Dramatic change is difficult, especially when we’ve been doing something the same way for generations. When we lose a tangible connection to our fondest memories, even if the need for change is evident, we know that change comes at a cost.

So it was with trepidation that I drove to the new Kansas City International Airport last week. The quirky old airport had been a familiar friend to me for 23 years and much longer for others since it opened in 1972. The old airport had been designed for its gates to be only 75 feet from the road, which often meant I could be dropped off and sitting at my gate in less than five minutes.

However, when I walked into the new airport — modern, welcoming and much, much, bigger — it was fantastic. Yes, long overdue.

I was even more anxious to attend a spring training baseball game in Arizona. Major league baseball has instituted a pitch clock for pitchers and hitters, arguably the most extreme rule change in the game since a walk was changed from five balls to four in 1889. Baseball had long been the game without a clock and thus romanticized as “timeless.”

In the movie “Field of Dreams,” James Earl Jones' character even says that while America has reinvented itself over time, “The one constant through all the years has been baseball,” and it “reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again.”

My worries were for naught. As I watched the Cleveland Guardians and the San Diego Padres players easily adapt to getting the ball in play in under 20 seconds, it felt like a revelation. The guy sitting behind me said, “They should have done this 20 years ago.”

Which brings us to U.S. Sens. Jerry Moran and Roger Marshall, of Kansas, and their new bill called the Freedom to Export to Cuba Act. They have teamed up with Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar, Chris Murphy and Elizabeth Warren to eliminate the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba.

Said Moran on March 10, the trade embargo “blocks our own farmers, ranchers, and manufacturers from selling into a market only 90 miles from our shoreline, while foreign competitors benefit at our expense,” while Marshall said the change “opens the door to a large export market, while leaving in place measures to address human rights abuses.”

This is an important development, because lifting the Cuban trade embargo — even though it began in 1961 as a Cold War action against the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union disappeared in 1991 — has been extremely difficult.

Democrats and Republicans alike have feared changing something that had become so entrenched in American political life. While the U.S. trades freely and beneficially with other such communist dictatorships as China, Vietnam and Laos, Cuba remains the exception. The cost to American businesses was estimated to be up to $4 billion a year.

Just as importantly, many Cuban people believe the embargo only feeds a nationalistic sentiment within Cuba by making its citizens reluctant to oppose their government and thus seem to “side” with the only country that treats them as world outcasts.

Changing this policy is hard. It’s been with us so long that it just seems like a fact of life.

Kudos to Sens. Moran and Marshall for recognizing that change is not only needed but also long overdue.

This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Jerry Moran and Roger Marshall propose Freedom to Export to Cuba Act