The NAFTA Superhighway
Ron Paul
October 30, 2006
By now many Texans have heard about the proposed “NAFTA Superhighway,” which is also referred to as the trans-Texas corridor. What you may not know is the extent to which plans for such a superhighway are moving forward without congressional oversight or media attention.
This superhighway would connect Mexico, the United States, and Canada, cutting a wide swath through the middle of Texas and up through Kansas City. Offshoots would connect the main artery to the west coast, Florida, and northeast. Proponents envision a ten-lane colossus the width of several football fields, with freight and rail lines, fiber-optic cable lines, and oil and natural gas pipelines running alongside.
This will require coordinated federal and state eminent domain actions on an unprecedented scale, as literally millions of people and businesses could be displaced. The loss of whole communities is almost certain, as planners cannot wind the highway around every quaint town, historic building, or senior citizen apartment for thousands of miles.
Governor Perry is a supporter of the superhighway project, and Congress has provided small amounts of money to study the proposal. Since this money was just one item in an enormous transportation appropriations bill, however, most members of Congress were not aware of it.
The proposed highway is part of a broader plan advanced by a quasi-government organization called the “Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America,” or SPP.
The SPP was first launched in 2005 by the heads of state of Canada, Mexico, and the United States at a summit in Waco.
The SPP was not created by a treaty between the nations involved, nor was Congress involved in any way. Instead, the SPP is an unholy alliance of foreign consortiums and officials from several governments. One principal player is a Spanish construction company, which plans to build the highway and operate it as a toll road. But don’t be fooled: the superhighway proposal is not the result of free market demand, but rather an extension of government-managed trade schemes like NAFTA that benefit politically-connected interests.
The real issue is national sovereignty. Once again, decisions that affect millions of Americans are not being made by those Americans themselves, or even by their elected representatives in Congress. Instead, a handful of elites use their government connections to bypass national legislatures and ignore our Constitution-- which expressly grants Congress the sole authority to regulate international trade.
The ultimate goal is not simply a superhighway, but an integrated North American Union--complete with a currency, a cross-national bureaucracy, and virtually borderless travel within the Union. Like the European Union, a North American Union would represent another step toward the abolition of national sovereignty altogether.
http://www.house.gov/paul/tst/tst2006/tst103006.htm
Bush Administration Quietly Plans NAFTA Super Highway
by Jerome R. Corsi
Posted: 06/12/2006
Quietly but systematically, the Bush Administration is advancing the plan to build a huge NAFTA Super Highway, four football-fields-wide, through the heart of the U.S. along Interstate 35, from the Mexican border at Laredo, Tex., to the Canadian border north of Duluth, Minn.
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=15497
For over ten years, NASCO has been developing a strong coalition of cities, counties, states, Canadian provinces, and private sector companies to lobby for federal funding and promote a "SuperCorridor" to address the transportation, trade and security needs of the three NAFTA nations.
We have assisted in the lobbying effort to bring hundreds of millions of dollars to the NASCO I-35 Corridor, resulting in High Priority Corridor status for I-35 in 1995 under the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA). In addition, we successfully assisted in lobbying for the creation of two new categories under the Transportation Act of the 21st Century (TEA-21) – the National Corridor Planning & Development Program and the Coordinated Border Infrastructure Program.
NASCO also successfully lobbied to take the Highway Trust fund "off-budget" which resulted in increased transportation formula funding for NASCO's corridor states.
NASCO has received $2.5 million in Congressional funding from the United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) for the development of a technology and tracking project. The project will have a team approach, using members of NASCO as the primary participants in the project, to the extent possible. NASCO believes the deployment of a modern information system will reduce the cost, improve the efficiency, reduce trade-related congestion, and enhance security of cross-border and corridor information, trade and traffic.
The NASCO "SuperCorridor Caucus" was formed on Capitol Hill to promote corridor development and to help secure NASCO legislative initiatives in both the authorization and appropriation processes.
We continue to be recognized as the strongest International Trade Corridor Coalition on Capitol Hill, and we are the only Corridor Coalition with true international representation from the three NAFTA nations.
http://www.nascocorridor.com/
"No North American Union" Personal Action Plan
http://www.jbs.org/node/5131
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