In The News

Lawmakers try again to block Mexican truck program

WASHINGTON — Opponents of a pilot program to give Mexican trucks greater access to U.S. highways won another round Thursday in their battle with the Bush administration.

The Senate Appropriations Committee voted 20-9 to block the program, which opponents say erodes highway safety and threatens U.S. jobs. The language, however, was attached to a transportation spending bill that probably will not be enacted before the president leaves office in January.

It was not the first time lawmakers have tried to thwart the program, which permits up to 500 trucks from 100 Mexican motor carriers full access to U.S. roads.

Last December, Congress cut off funding to implement the program, but a Transportation Department lawyer found a loophole that has allowed the program, established last September, to continue. Thursday’s provision makes doubly clear the lawmakers’ intent to block the program.

Democratic Sen. Byron Dorgan predicted the administration would lose a lawsuit pending in federal court that challenges the Transportation Department’s interpretation that last year’s law, which blocked federal money from being used to “establish” the program, does not apply since the program had been established before the law passed.

The amendment adopted Thursday says the government could not in “in any way permit” the program to go ahead.

“The Department of Transportation already has defied the intent of Congress once, and they are not going to get away with it again,” Dorgan said. “With this amendment, this program will finally come to an end.”

Opponents have been fighting the measure since it was first proposed in the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, saying the program will erode highway safety and eliminate U.S. jobs. And they say that there are insufficient safeguards to make sure Mexican trucks are as safe as U.S. carriers.

Supporters of the plan say letting more Mexican trucks onto U.S. highways ultimately will save American consumers hundreds of millions of dollars. They say U.S. trucking companies will benefit since reciprocal changes in Mexico’s rules permit U.S. trucks new access to that country.

Before, Mexican trucks have had to stop within a buffer border zone and transfer their loads to U.S. trucks.

Still, there is widespread opposition to the program within Congress. The House voted without a roll call in last July to block the program, and the Senate followed with a 3-to-1 vote in September to block it despite administration assurances that safeguards are in place to “ensure a safe and secure program.”