Trucking Sees Things to Like In Both White House Hopefuls
By Sean McNally, Senior Reporter
This story appears in the Sept. 8 print edition of Transport Topics.
As the two primary U.S. political parties concluded their presidential nominating conventions and formally began the fall campaign, trucking executives said each candidate offered pluses and minuses for the industry.
While neither candidate has said much specifically about trucking, it appeared that Democrat Barack Obama might support more highway spending, while Republican John McCain would lean trucking’s way on labor and safety issues.
“Our business is so complicated now that it doesn’t matter who controls Congress or the White House,” said American Trucking Associations President Bill Graves. “You’re always going to have challenges with some of these complex issues.” With that said, Graves tilted toward McCain.
“There’s something to like and something to dislike in the positions of both candidates,” Graves said, but he added, “It would be fair to say that we believe that a McCain presidency would overall be more positive for trucking than an Obama presidency.”
Graves told Transport Topics that both McCain and Obama hold various positions that may not be in line with some of ATA’s policy goals.
“There is genuine concern about what an Obama presidency would look like, relative to its impact on our industry,” he said. “What would the perspective of [the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration] be relative to our industry under that administration? What would the outcome of issues like card-check and some of the more pro-labor kinds of things? Will we revisit ergonomics under an Obama administration with a Democratically controlled Congress?”
In the Clinton administration, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued rules aimed at limiting repetitive stress injuries in the workplace. The trucking industry opposed the rules, and Congress overturned them early in the Bush administration.
While Obama may present challenges for trucking on labor and regulatory issues, McCain may make things more difficult on the issues of highway funding and infrastructure, Graves said.
“You get the sense that Sen. McCain might be inclined more toward the current administration’s thinking on privatization, more inclined to get more private-sector involvement as a way of sort of changing the whole dynamic of infrastructure finance, but also as a way of avoiding talking about raising taxes as a way of supporting infrastructure,” he said. “That would be a concern for us.”
Earlier this year, a bipartisan commission recommended a 25-cent to 40-cent fuel-tax increase to repair and improve the nation’s roads and bridges.
During the campaign, McCain proposed suspending the federal gasoline tax, a position Obama rejected, indicating that he would back more highway funding as part of an economic stimulus plan.
In August, Obama said he’d spend $25 billion to “invest in our national infrastructure, replenish the Highway Trust Fund, rebuild our crumbling roads and bridges and repair our crumbling schools.”
Dave Berry, vice president of Swift Transportation and a McCain supporter, told TT the Arizona senator “likes trucking and he likes trucks and understands how essential we are.”
If McCain were president, his stance against “earmarks” would be particularly important to trucking, Berry said. Earmarks are congressionally directed spending on specific projects.
Berry said, “He has fought against earmarks all of his time in the House and Senate, and he’s promised to veto every earmark that he’s sent, and that’s nothing but good for all of transportation, including the trucking industry,” because it would cut wasteful spending.
McCain’s stances on clean air and safety also fit well with trucking’s outlook, Berry said.
“We all very much support clean air and safety, and he has a record of moving the ball forward on safety issues for both cars and trucks and the entire transportation network,” he said. “And it’s my guess that we’d see more of that.”
George Billows, executive director of the Illinois Trucking Association, said he thought Obama “will be much more supportive, I believe, of highway funding and infrastructure improvements and all the things we desperately need.”
As a state senator, Billows said Obama “listened . . . even if he didn’t always vote our way.”
Rod Nofziger, a lobbyist for the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, said transportation has not been discussed much thus far in the campaign.
“The biggest thing that we’ve got . . . is the highway funding stuff,” he said. “Whereas Obama has come out in strong support of the national infrastructure bank . . . McCain has really focused most of his discussions on reining in earmarks and pork-barrel spending.”
“At least one area of concern . . . is Sen. McCain’s support for the cross-border trucking pilot program,” Nofziger added.
OOIDA has opposed allowing trucks from Mexico to deliver freight in the United States, and McCain has voted against restricting the Department of Transportation’s program.
Dick Henderson, director of government affairs for the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, said that regardless of who wins in November, he didn’t think “either candidate is going to advocate an increase in the gas tax” as they work with Congress to reauthorize the federal highway program.
