The House Foreign Affairs Committee is holding a hearing today on the almost 50 year old ban on travel to Cuba. The ban is part of a broader economic embargo in place since the early 1960s that was supposed to bring about change in the island’s oppressive, communist regime.

Instead, the embargo and travel ban have needlessly infringed on the freedom of Americans, weakened our influence in Cuba, and handed the Castro government a handy excuse for the failures of its Caribbean socialist experiment.

I wrote an op-ed recently advocating change in U.S. policy toward Cuba, and delivered a talk on the same theme at Rice University in 2005.

Will Congress finally change this failed U.S. policy?