Cdswans, do you actually read your post before you hit the submit button? I am surprised that they are not deleted by the moderators.
Do you recognize this man:
His name is Peter DeFazio, a Congressman from Oregon who serves on the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. In the following link, in which is part of the congressional records, Rep. DeFazio shoots down your very argument. Here's the link ,
House Gets Trucking's Counsel on Highway Policy . I will post it here as well. Read the whole article, but pay attention to the part in bold. I love the last paragraph, that would have been interesting to see him say that in person.
House Gets Trucking's Counsel on Highway Policy
The House committee that oversees transportation policy asked a trio of trucking executives for their insights on how to reduce highway congestion, keep freight moving on time and pay for improvements in the highway system.
The challenge has been the subject of extended public discussion, but this hearing produced an encouraging observation: People in competitive transportation modes might be ready to set aside their longstanding habits of contention in order to find a solution.
Christopher Lofgren, president and CEO of Schneider National, put it this way: "I think people recognize that there isn't one answer, there isn't one mode to solve the problem. There's more of a willingness to say how do we work through this, where traditionally we have fought each other to get whatever share we could get. It is different today. There is a new spirit of collaboration in the industry."
Lofgren was echoed by the other panelists, Douglas Duncan, president and CEO of FedEx Freight, and Tim Yatsko, senior vice president of Wal-Mart Stores. Still, as the hearing before the House Subcommittee on Highways, Transit and Pipelines made clear, the challenges facing the federal highway program will test the collaborative spirit.
Duncan noted that commercial vehicle miles will increase by 70 percent between 1998 and 2018. That growth will have to fit onto a highway system that is not keeping pace – highway lanes grew 3.4 percent between 1994 and 2004.
The highway program Congress passed last year "will probably just barely maintain our existing highways. It certainly won't expand them," Duncan said.
Highway funding probably is the biggest challenge. The subcommittee is an arm of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, which in the most recent legislative round pushed for raising federal fuel taxes and indexing them to inflation. That idea was rejected by the Bush administration. The final bill put considerable emphasis on alternative funding mechanisms, such as tolls and private financing.
Duncan told the subcommittee that these alternatives can work if they are properly controlled, and they are preferable to doing nothing, but his first choice would be to use the fuel tax system. "It's in place, it's an efficient way to raise dollars (and) it can put those dollars ... to infrastructure needs."
Duncan said he supports raising the fuel tax and indexing it to inflation.
While many in the highway community either support tolls or are resigned to them, Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., said he is not convinced that they are inevitable. "I'm worried about the fragmentation of what is now a great national network of highways," he said. "I'm thinking that moving to tolls has really taken us back more to the beginning of the Republic, as opposed to the dedication we had in the 1950s to a national system that was going to be the best in the world. I'm really worried about its future."
Another Oregon Democrat on the panel, Earl Blumenauer, predicted that the administration that takes over in 2009, whether Republican or Democratic, will be more open to raising the fuel tax.
Yatsko gave the panel some hard facts about the cost of congestion: Wal-Mart averages 21.26 percent fewer miles per tractor per week in metropolitan areas compared to rural areas, and 14.39 percent fewer miles compared to its entire fleet, he said.
The company has developed techniques for working through and around congestion, he said. It has refined its pickup and delivery operations, built consolidation facilities, and uses "drop and hook" trailer pools rather than live loading and unloading.
Lofgren suggested a raft of policy changes, from tax breaks on federally mandated equipment to lowering speed limits. One suggestion was directed at the driver shortage.
"Driver pay is our No. 1 cost," he said. "It hasn't changed in real terms since 1980 – it's actually less. We have to be able to recover that cost and the market does not allow us to do it."
Part of the solution would be to expand permanent employment visas to cover immigrant truck drivers, he said. "We know there is a significant population of potential immigrants with truck driving experience. Existing immigration laws have allowed us to successfully recruit a limited number. To do more, the laws must recognize truck driving as a critical skill."
This drew a sharp response from the Teamsters' DeFazio, who said that instead of importing cheap labor, the industry should raise driver pay. "If we don't open the door to immigrants who will work for less, then maybe everybody will have to raise their wages and you won't be at a disadvantage."
DeFazio also suggested a federal minimum wage and benefit standard for truck drivers .
"With all due respect, sir," Lofgren told DeFazio, "I don't know that you guys have been proved to be real successful with these kinds of activities."
"Well," DeFazio replied, "it doesn't sound like you've been real successful in your business here, because you want to import labor into a country that has a labor surplus among people who have less than a college education. And, as you pointed out, you're paying people less than in 1980. I don't consider that to be a great success, either. Maybe profitable, but at some point you have to have a middle class, and truck drivers used to be middle class. And if you want to put them in the poverty class then you are moving in the right direction."
Watch out for those drug test companies!
