Madness In Our Policies, Danger On Our Roads

Upon leaving office, President Eisenhower was asked to name his greatest accomplishment; he cited the Interstate Highway System. This vast network of safe and well maintained roads has spawned a $623 billion trucking industry that, among the many goods and services it transports, has enabled Americans to enjoy a greater variety of fresh foods at lower prices than are enjoyed by virtually any other nation on earth.

Unfortunately, the White House has recently implemented a provision of the North American Free Trade Act (NAFTA) that will allow up to 100 Mexican trucking companies, and an unspecified number of their trucks, to use our roadways to freely haul their cargo anywhere within the United States. The policy of allowing unsafe, unregulated, low-paid truckers onto our roads threatens an American industry, American jobs, the quality of American life, and the health and safety of all Americans.

Because of enormous opposition at the time from American trucking companies, the Clinton Administration had the good judgment to put a hold on this NAFTA pilot project. This year the U.S. House of Representatives has overwhelmingly voted on multiple occasions to prohibit this onslaught of Mexican trucks.

The Teamsters Union and the Sierra Club have also opposed the project in federal court. Yet despite the overwhelming opposition of a major American industry, the overwhelming and bipartisan opposition from Congress, and even before a federal judge ruled last month to permit the project, the Administration began granting Mexican truckers the unrestricted access to every roadway in the United States.

At a time when our nation is spending billions of dollars fighting a war on drugs, when millions of Americans are demanding that our border be secured because of the legions of illegal aliens already here and the very real threat of terrorists crossing our unprotected border, when so many once-vibrant American industries and jobs have been exported to foreign countries -- one has to wonder what drives such thinking and policies as this. Is the Executive Branch of our government even concerned what our Constitution says and what the people think, or has it become beholden to powerful transnational corporations that have no allegiance whatsoever to our United States?

Our highly regulated trucking companies will find it difficult to compete with foreign companies paying their drivers a fraction of U. S. wages. Further, Mexican drivers, unlike their U.S. counterparts, have no restrictions on the number of hours that a trucker may actually work, and Mexico keeps no data on the criminal and driving records of its truck drivers!

While American companies will be offered reciprocal access to Mexico, most American companies refuse to send trucks into Mexico because some Mexican police are as likely to rob and extort bribes as Mexico’s vibrant crime syndicates are.

At a time when the Administration is continuing to neglect border enforcement, do we really want to provide more people more ways to illegally enter our country? And what assurance do we have that those low-paid Mexican truckers will not be bribed to transport illegal drugs or illegal aliens or materials of mass terror?

When trucks that do not have to abide by the same pollution and safety standards as American trucks injure or kill Americans on our roadways, what protections and guarantees do Americans have that the perpetrator will be insured and will face the same penalties as an American trucker.

Consider a policy that erodes U. S. sovereignty, threatens a major American industry, is likely to export even more jobs out of our country, threatens the health and safety of Americans on our roadways, and could facilitate moving more illegal drugs, aliens and criminal activity into our country. This is not a policy in the interest of the people of the United States. It’s time for Congress to terminate this fool-hearty project that is increasingly undermining our sovereignty and the best interests of we, the people of the United States of America.