Barring Access of Long-Haul Mexican Trucks

Floor Speech

BARRING ACCESS OF LONG-HAUL MEXICAN TRUCKS -- (House of Representatives - September 09, 2008)

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Mr. FILNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would also thank you for forging this legislation in a bipartisan way which you will hopefully have unanimous support with this Congress. This program we're trying to roll back I think is one of the most dangerous programs this administration has ever tried to put into effect.

I represent the entire California-Mexico border. It is my district. I know what happens with these trucks at the border. We haven't dealt with issues of licensing of drivers, we haven't dealt with insurance or safety of the trucks, not even mentioning the jobs that are lost to American truckers.

Let me just tell you two things very quickly about what goes on at the border.

The Federal Motor Carrier Transportation Administration issues what it calls a tamperproof sticker, a green sticker to say that this truck is safe. I have been in Tijuana and I have seen these windshields which have the tamperproof sticker put on different trucks. So they haven't tampered with the sticker, but they put it on a different truck.

I have seen papers that supposedly guarantee insurance of a truck. A company that owns 10 trucks will buy an insurance policy for one truck and pass that paper around to all of the other ones. They're very difficult to distinguish. They pass the muster at the border and they're free, under this program that we're trying to stop, to move around in our Nation without really having any choice.

We could go on for hours on this. We have looked at all of these different aspects that the administration just refuses to look at.

So, Mr. DeFazio, thank you for bringing this to us. We have got to stop this program. We've got to stop it now and save both jobs and lives of American truckers.

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