firemarypeters

Those were the words spoken by Sen. Mark Pryor to Mary Peters on Tuesday. She was also excoriated by Sen. Byron Dorgan. It did Teamster hearts good to hear him call her “arrogant” over and over. And to hear him say, “There will be consequences.”

The March 11 Senate Commerce Committee hearing on Cross-Border Trucking was a rock ‘em, sock ‘em affair. Peters robotically repeated her argument that she’s within the law by keeping the borders open to unsafe trucks from Mexico. She brought her sidekick, the general counsel for the Transportation Department, D.J. Gribbin. Gribbin’s main qualifications as a constitutional lawyer seems to be his experience as field director for the Christian Coalition.

Gribbin told Dorgan that the “plain meaning” of the law that cut off funding for the pilot program is that it DOESN’T cut off funding.

“You’re making a big mistake,” Dorgan said. “You can get a lawyer to tell you just about anything.”

Adding to Mary Peters’ discomfort were the bombshells Inspector General Calvin Scovel dropped during the hearing.

For example, Mary Peters has no way of knowing if trucks are being checked when they cross the border.

Congress was promised that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) would make sure they were checked through a quality control measure — random checks. “Without this quality control measure, FMCSA does not have assurance that it has checked every Mexican truck and driver that is participating in the project when they cross the border into the United States,” said Scovel’s report.

What’s worse is that border inspectors are only glancing at a driver’s license and a safety decal — they’re not inspecting the trucks, as Mary Peters likes to claim.

Scovel also revealed that if a driver correctly identifies the meaning of four U.S. highway signs, but does so in Spanish, that counts as “English proficient.”

Unbelievable.