WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two U.S. senators voiced confidence on Thursday that were enough votes in the Senate to lift a decades-old U.S. ban on travel to Cuba, despite a threat by one opponent to try to block the measure.
"The nearly 50-year embargo and travel ban restricting Americans' right to travel to Cuba has been a failure," Senator Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat, said in a joint statement with Senator Mike Enzi, a Wyoming Republican.
The House of Representatives Agriculture Committee voted 25-20 on Wednesday in favor of lifting the travel ban and easing food sales to the Communist-led island.
Supporters hope for a vote in the House after lawmakers return this month from next week's July 4th holiday recess.
Dorgan and Enzi said they planned to push their own bill to lift the travel ban in the short amount of time left on this year's legislative calendar.
Lawmakers will be gone for most of August and could work only a few weeks in September and October in order to return home to campaign for November elections.
"Decades of the same policy will get you the same result. We're hopefully about to change that and open up a new world for the people of Cuba," Enzi said.
Senator Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat whose parents were Cuban immigrants, has threatened to use Senate procedures to try to block a vote on any attempt to lift the travel ban.
It takes 60 votes in the 100-member Senate to overcome the procedural hurdle.
Dorgan and Enzi's bill to lift the travel ban currently has 40 sponsors.
(Reporting by Doug Palmer; Editing by Jackie Frank)
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