Senate votes to kill Mexican truck demo

Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-.N.D.

The U.S. Senate has dealt a likely death blow to the Bush administration plans to give Mexican long-haul trucking rigs free access to American roads and highways.

A bipartisan majority voted 74-24 tonight to pass an amendment offered by Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., to remove funding from the Fiscal Year 2008 Department of Transportation appropriations bill for the Department of Transportation Mexican trucking demonstration project.

Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Penn., joined Dorgan as a co-sponsor of the amendment.

"Tonight, commerce – for a change – did not trump safety," Dorgan said in a news release issued after the vote.

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"Tonight's vote is a vote for safety," Dorgan said. "It also represents a turning of the tide on the senseless, headlong rush this country has been engaged in for some time, to dismantle safety standards and a quality of life it took generations to achieve."

Teamster General President Jim Hoffa praised the Senate for "slamming the door on the Bush administration's illegal, reckless plan to open our borders to trucks from Mexico."

"The American people have spoken, and Congress has spoken," Hoffa said. "Now it's time for the Bush administration to listen. We don't want to share our highways with dangerous trucks from Mexico."

A counter amendment offered by Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, was submitted in an effort to keep the truck project alive, even if on life support.

Cornyn had proposed to allow the demonstration project to go forward, while reserving the right of the Senate to pull the plug if safety problems developed in the initial phases of the program roll-out.

Cornyn's proposal was killed by a strong bipartisan 80-18 vote.

Repeatedly, in arguing from the floor of the Senate for his amendment, Cornyn mischaracterized NAFTA as having created a "treaty obligation" requiring the U.S. to allow Mexican trucks free access to U.S. roads.

Dorgan objected, pointing out NAFTA was passed in 1993 as a law, not a treaty.

The vote, taken on the evening of the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, represented a strong sentiment in the Senate that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and the DOT inspector general had failed to make the case in their eleventh hour reports submitted to Congress late last Thursday. Administration officials insisted adequate inspection procedures were in place to insure Mexican trucks would meet U.S. safety standards.

Dorgan argued on the Senate floor that Mexico had no national database that would permit the FMCSA or the DOT inspector general to verify accident reports or driver violations of Mexican drivers or the reliability of vehicle inspections conducted in Mexico.

Speaking in favor of Dorgan's amendment, Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, said the issue really was "free trade" agreements advanced by the Bush administration that advantaged only multi-national corporations.

Brown compared the safety concerns of allowing Mexican trucks to enter freely into the U.S. with the safety risks raised by lead paint use by the Chinese on imported toys and Chinese pet and human food that contained poisonous or otherwise toxic elements.

"We need to vote for our children, for our families, for our pets, and for ourselves," Brown charged, urging in an emotional plea urging passage of Dorgan's amendment.

In May, the House of Representatives passed the Safe American Roads Act of 2007 (H.R. 1773), by an overwhelming, bipartisan 411-3 vote.

The majority in the House opposing the demonstration project makes almost certain the Dorgan amendment will survive when a conference committee reviews the DOT funding bill that will go to President Bush for his signature.

The Senate is now considered likely to finalize the DOT funding bill today, with the Dorgan amendment included.

"Because my amendment is identical to language already included in the House-passed version of this bill," Dorgan said in the statement issued after the vote, "I expect this provision will not be altered in the House-Senate conference committee and that we have, effectively, stopped this pilot program."

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