Collision over truck bill looms - Congress moves to block an administration program that allows Mexican freight-haulers throughout the U.S.
WASHINGTON — Congress on Tuesday moved to block the Bush administration from allowing Mexican trucks to travel throughout the United States, setting up a collision with the White House and possibly straining relations with Mexico.
Senators from both parties, citing safety concerns, attached a measure to a transportation spending bill to block funding for the cross-border trucking program. The House earlier this year approved a similar measure, virtually ensuring it will be in the final bill.
Bush has threatened to veto the bill over its price tag, and the White House issued a statement Tuesday saying it "strongly opposes" any effort to delay the program.
Mexican trucks: An article in Wednesday's Section A on a Senate amendment to block Mexican trucks from traveling throughout the United States said the vote was 74 to 24. After the vote was recorded, Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-N.C.) said she meant to vote "yea" instead of "nay" and asked that her vote be changed, making the final vote 75 to 23.
The action comes just days after U.S. transportation officials gave a green light to the first of as many as 100 Mexican trucking companies that would be allowed to operate throughout the United States in a one-year demonstration period. Until now, Mexican trucks have been restricted to a narrow zone north of the U.S.-Mexico border where they transfer their cargo to American big rigs.
On Monday, the first Mexican truck delivered a load of steel to North Carolina.
"This is about safety," said Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.), a leading critic of the program. "We don't have equivalent standards between this country and Mexico. Not yet."
Opposing the Senate action, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said, "This is not about safety. . . . It's apparently about protectionism. . . . It's fear of free trade."
After the vote, John H. Hill, head of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, which regulates truck safety, called the action a "sad victory for the politics of fear and protectionism and a disappointing defeat for U.S. consumers and U.S. truck drivers."
The debate over Mexican trucks has been waged in Congress, in the courts, in protests at the border and on the presidential campaign trail since the North American Free Trade Agreement passed in 1993.
Tuesday's vote could heighten U.S.-Mexican tensions, which are already strained by the debate over illegal immigration, especially Washington's plans for 700 miles of fence along the border.
Mexican Secretary of the Economy Eduardo Sojo said in a letter to U.S. senators that President Felipe Calderon's administration was "deeply troubled" by efforts to block the program.
