Posted on 09/11/2007 5:09:04 PM PDT by ruination
WASHINGTON - The Senate voted Tuesday to ban Mexican trucks from U.S. roadways, rekindling a more than decade-old trade dispute with Mexico.
By a 74-24 vote, the Senate approved a proposal by Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., prohibiting the Transportation Department from spending money on a North American Free Trade Agreement pilot program giving Mexican trucks access to U.S. highways.
The proposal is part of a $106 billion transportation and housing spending bill that the Senate hopes to vote on later this week. The House approved a similar provision to Dorgan's in July as part of its version of the transportation spending bill.
Supporters of Dorgan's amendment argued the trucks are not yet proven safe. Opponents said the U.S. is applying tougher standards to Mexican trucks than to Canadian trucks and failing to live up to its NAFTA obligations.
Until last week, Mexican trucks were restricted to driving within a commercial border zone that stretched about 20 miles from the U.S.-Mexican boundary, 75 miles in Arizona. One truck has traveled deep into the U.S. interior as part of the pilot program.
Blocking the trucks would help Democrats curry favor with organized labor, an important ally for the 2008 presidential elections.
"Why the urgency? Why not stand up for the (truck) standards that we've created and developed in this country?" Dorgan asked.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who drafted a Republican alternative to Dorgan's amendment, said the attempt to block the trucks appeared to be about limiting competition and may amount to discrimination against Mexico.
"I would never allow an unsafe truck on our highways, particularly Texas highways," he said.
Under NAFTA, Mexico can seek retaliation against the U.S. for failing to adhere to the treaty's requirements, including retaining tariffs on goods that the treaty eliminates, said Sidney Weintraub, a professor emeritus at the University of Texas LBJ School of Public Affairs in Austin.
The trucking program allows up to 100 Mexican carriers to send their trucks on U.S. roadways for delivery and pickup of cargo. None can carry hazardous material or haul cargo between U.S. points.
So far, the Department of Transportation has granted a single Mexican carrier, Transportes Olympic, access to U.S. roads after a more than decade-long dispute over the NAFTA provision opening up the roadways.
One of the carrier's trucks crossed the border in Laredo, Texas last week and delivered its cargo in North Carolina on Monday and was expected to return to Mexico late this week after a stop in Decatur, Ala.
The transportation bill is S. 1789.
These are three globalist that have been pushing all this imminent domain, Trans-Texas corridor, Mexican trucker program, Nafta BS for quite sometime.
The sooner they are out of office, the better Texas will be for it.
Congress, bowing down to corporate interest has for many years attempted to drive down wages and compensation for the American middle class.
It’s all about the bottom line folks. There is no more loyalty to the workers who help the corp achieve such success.
The corporation I work for has been freezing / cutting wages, cutting benefits dramatically over the last several years and shipping good paying positions overseas all the while enjoying over a hundred billion (that’s with a B) in revenue yearly and cash reserves of twenty billion (again with a B) sitting in the bank.
Oh, did I mention the millions in compensation top management enjoys.
Greed. shear greed.
Actually, only 22 Republican Senators voted against the Dorgan Amendment and in favor of letting the Mexican trucks in. Twenty-five Republicans voted in favor of the Amendment and against the trucks. So, a majority still voted with us.
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=110&session=1&vote=00331
But your point is still a good one. After all, no Democrats voted with us; they heard the people and voted accordingly. What has happened to so many Republicans? I think that too many of them are out of touch with the people, have been in their seats for too long, and have been drinking the globalist kool aid.
Understood...yet both of my senators from Texas ignored the will of the people.
Visualize this: They remind me of serpents in a foggy stinking gutter that are dragging the entire party into the sewer.....
Do all you Ivory Tower types live in a bubble? There are far more serious consequences to this issue than mere ‘efficency’.
Because stopping non-citizens from invading is exactly like stopping citizens from leaving. LOL!
Exactly right. He would get knocked on his ass if he made the charges to a Teasmster’s face. I would do the same to someone who accused me of being a thug.
Its the ability to be anonymous on FR that allows people to make the claims they wouldn’t dare make in another setting. That’s why I encourged him to do as I recommended.
Because freedom doesn't matter. Higher prices, less trade, for the children!
Scabs are the trash who cross the picket lines of union members.
For all those of you celebrating this victory for the Teamsters’ Union, keep in mind just what kind of thugs you’re siding with:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1893345/posts
What is troubling about this is that Mexican Airlines must meet FAA/NTSB standards to fly in to the US why shouldn’t Mexican truckers.
Frustrating isn't it? My lone Republican Senator, Allard, also climbed into the gutter voting to let the Mexican trucks in. But still, we won.
And here's the interesting part; this will, in effect, kill the TTC/NAFTA Superhighway project. After all, what good is a brand new smuggling corridor right through the center of our country if the smugglers aren't allowed to use it?
I heard on the radio this morning that Bush has threatened to veto the transportation bill if it shows up with the Dorgan Amendment attached. This should be interesting.
Visualize this: They remind me of serpents in a foggy stinking gutter that are dragging the entire party into the sewer.....
We need to make some changes; we need to elect Americans. No more globalists!
“Truckers are 60 times more likely to suffer a heart attack by the age of 50 than non truckers. Cancer strikes truckers 20 times more frequently than non truckers. Joint and back injuries are the number one debilitating illness for truckers, ending the careers of approx. 20k per year. There are approx. 8 million class A & B CDL holders in the U.S., and only 3 million active drivers. Less than half are over the road drivers’
I wonder what % of truckers smoke. That could be the reason for cancer and heart attack rates.
Democrats...doing the work that Republicans won't do.
Seriously, why weren't the Pubbies on this first?
” Should Mexicans be required to fly a US airline when flying into the US?”
No. but the pilots must speak english and follow FAA rules and reg. The pilots are checked and so are the planes.
Plus when a Mexican plane arrives all the passengers, and the cargo is unloaded at port of entry and inspected. The plane is also inspected (at least in theory). A plane from a foreign country cannot just land and take off.
I was responding to comments about unions. I understand that unions (thank god) are a small part of the US trucking industry.
The government is capable but I agree there is a legitimate question about the will to enforce reasonable safety laws. There will be two level enforcement by the Feds and States as I understand. The pilot program will hopefully evaluate the viability of the program.
There are many tradeoffs in life. Even with reasonable safety standards, there will be accidents and deaths for US drivers. I do not want the rate to increase with the Mexican drivers. If there are problems with the Mexican drivers, the program should be modified or curtailed to fix the problem.
Absolutely.......Robert Frost had it right, "good fences make good neighbors."
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."
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