Marshall Sanford: “I rise this evening to talk about a bill that Jim McGovern of Massachusetts and I have that we will be offering…”

“I rise this evening to talk about a bill that Jim McGovern of Massachusetts and I have that we will be offering tomorrow. I think it is an important bill from the standpoint of advancing and perpetuating this American notion called freedom. It is a bill that had 130 sponsors in the last Congress. I am joined on the bill by Tom Emmer and Mr. Poe and Mr. Amash as original cosponsors as we drop the bill tomorrow. It is quite simply entitled the Freedom to Travel to Cuba bill. It does what the name suggests, to lift the current restrictions in encumbering Americans' ability to travel to Cuba. Why is that important? I think it is important for a number of different reasons, first of which is tied to the basic, fundamental notion of American liberty. American liberty is built of many different things. The Supreme Court has actually determined that as real as what you choose to wear, what you choose to eat, or what you choose to read is this basic, fundamental right to travel. In the American system, we can travel as we see fit. I can go here, I can go there. I am going to visit my grandmother in Des Moines, my cousin in Chicago. We choose without government control and without government edict where we come and where we go. It is a far cry from what we saw in the former Soviet Union where you had to have your papers to determine where you could travel. I have a map of the globe here. Did you know that you or I could travel to any country on this globe except one?…”