The audio is both hysterically funny and frightening at the same time.  United States Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND), chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee holding an oversight hearing to call the US Secretary of Transportation on the carpet for directly violating a congressional order to cease a program allowing Mexican big rigs to drive anywhere in the US.  The little noticed hearing was held in Washington on March 10.

While a DOT lawyer went several rounds with the Senator over the definition of the word “establish” as opposed to the phrase “establish and implement” in the law,  the Secretary and her Inspector General, Calvin Scovel directly contradicted each other with regard to safety procedures.  The Secretary insisted that each and every truck and driver were inspected and vetted, her IG on the other hand said they were not.

The funniest and most surreal part however is the DOT people insisting that a Mexican truck driver answering questions in Spanish was in fact “proficient in English“.

Hear the entire exchange in the MarkTalk Archive for 3/10/08   (run time 32:22)

This entry was posted on Monday, March 17th, 2008 at 8:31 am and is filed under MarkTalk.com News & Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.