
Senate Hopeful Says Taxpayer Money to Promote Trucking to Women ‘Doesn’t Make Any Sense’
Washington D.C. – A candidate for the United States Senate is voicing his opposition to taxpayer funding for an advisory board to promote trucking jobs to women.
J.D. Vance, author of the bestselling book Hillbilly Elegy, is running as a Republican to replace Ohio Senator Rob Portman.
On Tuesday, Vance sounded off about his frustration surrounding the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill just passed by the Senate.
“The problem here is not that we don’t need infrastructure. We do,” Vance told Fox News. “The problem with this bill is it spends a ton of taxpayer dollars and it doesn’t solve any real problem that we have. It doesn’t solve the long-term immigration problem. It doesn’t solve the border crisis. It doesn’t solve the inflation crisis.”
Vance then directed his ire specifically at a provision in the Senate’s bill which calls for the creation of a “Women of Trucking Advisory Board.”
“It is the sense of Congress that the trucking industry should explore every opportunity to encourage and support the pursuit and retention of careers in trucking by women, including through programs that support recruitment, driver training, and mentorship,” the bill states.
“There’s a new government bureaucracy created in this infrastructure package that is basically targeted at the problem of too many men driving big rigs,” Vance complained. “This is an actual provision in the legislation. Why do we need to spend taxpayer money to try to get fewer men and more women into the big rig profession? It doesn’t make any sense.”
Trucking stakeholders have deployed numerous strategies to market truck driving opportunities to women, especially in the last decade.
Still, less than 7 percent of all truck driving jobs are filled by women.
WATCH the full interview below.
.@JDVance1 says the $3.5 trillion Democrat spending plan is a mistake for spending American taxpayer dollars to not solve any real problems: “We’ve basically given the Democrats a ton of their wish list and I think not gotten a ton in response.” pic.twitter.com/117UurJjMt
— Brian Kilmeade (@kilmeade) August 10, 2021