As two Senate committees consider legislation that would prevent Mexican trucks from operating in the United States, President Bush is talking about a veto.

The threat of a veto was made in a letter Wednesday to Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert Byrd (D-W.V.). It follows a vote in the U.S. House late last month where lawmakers voted 285-143 to block funding for the Department of Transportation to issue permits to let Mexican trucking companies operate beyond the narrow commercial trading zone in the U.S.
The provision is part of next fiscal year’s transportation funding package, which in the House-passed version also stripped $88 million Bush requested for extra Mexican truck inspections. (FY 2002 starts this October.)
In the Senate version of the transportation appropriations bill, Patty Murray (D-Wash.) has included a provision under which Mexican trucks wouldn't get full access to U.S. roads until American officials inspect them twice at Mexican
trucking facilities. The provision also would prohibit Mexican trucks from entering this country until there are enough trained inspectors to handle the load, according to published reports.
Murray is chairwoman of the Senate Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee, which along with the Senate Appropriations Committee is scheduled to vote on the bill today.
The Associated Press reports the President is facing considerable opposition to his threat of a veto.
Senator Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) said earlier he would propose an identical measure to the House version, while the ranking Republican on the Senate Committee, Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-Texas), has said she opposes allowing Mexican trucks full access to the U.S. unless regulations tougher than those proposed by the Bush administration are introduced.
At stake is the eight-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement, which was already supposed to allow Mexican trucks full access to the U.S. But during President Clinton’s tenure in the White House, he put a stop to that provision, citing safety concerns over Mexican trucks.
Earlier this year, a NAFTA arbitration panel ruled the United States was in violation of the accord. That set the stage for the U.S. to either pay damages to Mexican carriers, who claimed they lost money because the U.S. border had not been fully opened to them, or for President Bush to allow them into this country. Bush chose the latter option, living up to one of his campaign promises on free trade.