MONEY BILL ENDS BUSH MEXICAN TRUCKS SCHEME

WASHINGTON (PAI)--Unsafe Mexican trucks, manned by tired drivers, will not be allowed to roam all U.S. roads, Congress decided on March 10.

Tucked in the $410 billion money bill funding nine government departments for the rest of the year ending Sept. 30 is a flat ban on spending any money for a Bush government “pilot project” that let those rigs roam nationwide. Democratic President Barack Obama signed the bill, thus enacting the ban. 

The anti-Mexican trucks measure ends a Transportation Department pilot project to let trucks from 27 Mexican firms, certified as “safe,” roam nationwide. Bush’s DOT imposed that plan starting in Sept. 2007 despite congressional bans on Mexican trucks nationwide, opposition from the Teamsters and road safety groups, and lawsuits. 

The controversial U.S.-Canada-Mexico “free trade” treaty, NAFTA, calls for the Mexican trucks to roam nationwide. The Democratic Clinton administration restricted them to a 20-mile zone north of the U.S.-Mexico border. They’re now back to that zone. 

Bush’s DOT claimed the “pilot project” would show if Mexico had the safety standards, testing facilities and driver licensing and rest-period rules needed to meet U.S. requirements. DOT’s own inspector general reported that with only 27 firms, “the level of participation is not enough to yield statistically valid findings” about safety.