Annotations for Places: United States--mississippi

You're listening to Latino USA. Government officials from states along the US-Mexico border came together for a border summit in El Paso, Texas. On the agenda, how to pay for improving infrastructure projects. Luis Saenz of station KTEP reports.

Texas Congressman Ron Coleman, who convened the border summit, says, "It is unfair for border residents to pick up the tab in preparation of a North American free trade agreement." Coleman specifically opposes a proposal by house majority leader Richard Gephardt to levy a special tax on border businesses. Coleman says, "No one has asked people along the Mississippi to pay for flood damage, so why should the border be any different?"

It seems to me illogical, then, that something that benefits the entire United States, meaning international world trade and commerce, people of America would ask people along the border to pay for.

Coleman says, instead of taxing border communities, the government should use the money collected from duties at the various ports of entries to pay for infrastructure projects. For Latino USA, I'm Luis Saenz in El Paso, Texas,