Thread: House Passes Ban on Cross-Border Truck Program

Good news, but be ready to call your senators, so we get enough votes to over ride the veto!!

The measure would block the Transportation Department from going ahead with a pilot program giving Mexican trucks greater access to U.S. highways. Supporters of the plan, including the administration, say it would save American consumers hundreds of millions of dollars

Everytime they something is going to save us millions, the prices on eveything goes up! PLEASSSSEEEE give us a break and stop lieing.

Transportation bill clears U.S. House
By eTrucker Staff
Nov 15, 2007

A federal transportation bill that includes a ban on funding for the Bush administration's cross-border trucking program cleared the U.S. House of Representatives on Nov. 14. The Senate is expected to pass the same bill this week.

While approved 270-147 by the House, the bill's future is in doubt. President Bush has threatened to veto the $105.6 billion package, and Wednesday's vote fell eight short of the number needed for an override. Bush says the bill spends about $5.5 billion more than a version submitted by the White House.

The fiscal 2008 transportation spending bill was approved Nov. 8 by a House-Senate conference committee. The committee's version retains language that would block funding for the U.S. Department of Transportation's program allowing certain carriers to do long-haul trucking across the U.S.-Mexico border.

DOT spokesman Brian Turmail told CCJ on Nov. 9 that Transportation Secretary Mary Peters regretted the House-Senate conference committee's decision to retain the funding ban, but that she wasn't giving up on the cross-border program until a prohibition became law.

The bill also retains language that would prohibit interstate tolling in Texas. The amendment was introduced to the Senate’s version of the bill by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, and was kept in the final version.

The bill also contains $195 million for a new Interstate 35 West bridge in Minneapolis to replace the one that collapsed into the Mississippi River on Aug. 1, killing 13 and injuring more than 100 people.

The bill also includes $1 billion to repair deficient bridges nationwide, a 25 percent increase in current funding. That still would lag behind the pace of spending envisioned by U.S. Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., in a separate authorization bill that would have created a $25 billion long-term bridge-repair plan to be financed with a 5-cent-a-gallon increase in the federal fuel tax. When H.R. 3999 left the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, which Oberstar chairs, the $25 billion figure had shrunk to $2 billion, and the tax increase had disappeared.

Of the conference committee's $1 billion bridge-repair appropriation, Oberstar said in a statement: "While much more is needed, this is an important first step toward rehabilitating our Nation’s deteriorating infrastructure."

The cross-border program, which has been in place since Sept. 6, allows a limited number of Mexican trucking companies to operate beyond the 25-mile commercial zone in the United States. Under a reciprocity agreement with Mexico, the one-year program also allows a limited number of U.S. carriers to operate into Mexico.

Critics, including the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association and the Teamsters, argue that the program lacks enough safeguards to ensure that Mexican trucks meet the same safety standards as American trucks. Earlier this year, the Teamsters sought unsuccessfully to obtain an emergency injunction blocking the program before it began.

Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa said he fully expected the funding ban to win final passage. “Letting trucks from Mexico drive everywhere in America is unpopular for a good reason: It’s dangerous and illegal,â€

House Vote to Cut Off Funding for Bush’s Reckless NAFTA Trucks Program Is Important Step for Safety
Thu, 11/15/2007 - 14:33 — newsdesk
Statement of Joan Claybrook, President of Public Citizen
Nov. 14, 2007 -- "We are now one step closer to protecting the public from the Bush administration’s reckless rush to give Mexico-based trucks full access to U.S. roads.

This evening’s overwhelming vote (270-147) by the House of Representatives to pass the final Department of Transportation (DOT) spending bill is also, ultimately, a vote to shut down the Bush administration’s dangerous “pilot programâ€

House passes transportation spending bill, but Bush vows to veto it
Staff -- 11/15/2007

WASHINGTON—The much publicized cross-border trucking initiative between the United States and Mexico may be facing another roadblock after the United States House of Representatives passed a $105.6 billion bill for transportation, housing and community development programs, according to an Associated Press report.

The bill—entitled H.R. 3074 Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2008—would block the Department of Transportation from moving forward with a pilot program that would give Mexican and American trucks more access to each others highways, the AP reported.

When the program was first rolled out by the DOT earlier this year, it proposed that a few Mexican trucking companies, including some that currently operate daily in El Paso and San Diego, would be able to travel beyond the approximately 25 mile commercial zone that runs along the U.S. border. And participating U.S. and Mexican trucking companies could begin their new operations immediately once they have been granted operating authority by the DOT and have secured cargo to haul.

According to a statement from the White House, President George W. Bush is prepared to veto this bill. One main reason for his pending veto is that the bill “includes a level of highway spending that is $2.3 billion above the President’s request and exacerbates the strained financial condition of the Highway Trust Fund….[which] would plunge the highway account into deficit by $5 billion in 2009.â€