WASHINGTON - The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is not being tough enough on bus and truck companies that violate U.S. safety laws, says the chairman of the powerful House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

Rep. Jim Oberstar, D-Minn., cited a new report by the General Accounting Office, compiled at the committee's request, that says that while the FMCSA may be doing a decent job of identifying high-risk carriers, it is not following through with tough fines against serious rules violators as mandated by law.

According to the GAO report, the FMCSA is a paper tiger, failing to assess maximum fines against carriers with a pattern of varied serious violations.

In a letter to FMCSA Administrator John Hill, Oberstar used the report's findings to take the agency to task for not complying with specific enforcement mandates, calling the agency's actions "indefensible and unacceptable."

"I am deeply troubled by the GAO findings regarding FMCSAs practice of assessing fines to motor carriers that repeatedly violate critical motor carrier safety statutes," Oberstar wrote.

"I strongly urge FMCSA to amend its policies immediately to be consistent with statutory requirements with respect to maximum penalties for repeat rule violators."

FMCSAs policy for fining serious rule violators is "essentially meaningless and violates the law," said Oberstar. He pointed out a discrepancy between the number of carriers that were given the maximum fines (280 in 2006), versus the number the GOA contends should have been (1,320) if FMCSA had followed the law.

Oberstar asked to know, within 30 days, what specific actions FMCSA was taking to comply with the statutory requirements.

The GAO contends the agency's "three strikes rule" is contrary to law, which the GAO says requires maximum fines after the second instance of a violation.

The GAO recommended the FMCSA select certain high-risk carriers in the accident safety evaluation area for compliance reviews and revise its policy for assessing maximum fines.

The Department of Transportation said it would "assess the efficacy" of the first recommendation, but it did not comment on the other recommendations.

Other shortcomings identified by the GAO report include:

FMCSAs policy for prioritizing carriers for compliance reviews does not always target the truck and bus companies that have the highest crash risks.

FMCSA does not have an established time frame for follow-up compliance reviews for bus and truck operators that have been given a conditional rating. As a result, companies can continue operating for two years or more with a conditional rating and no follow-up inspection, posing safety risks to everyone.

The FMCSA has a policy of discouraging its inspectors from making repeat visits to high-risk truck and bus operators that received unsatisfactory ratings during their last compliance review because the agency "believed that not enough time had elapsed to show whether safety improvements had taken effect."

The 72-page GAO report is available on the Web at www.gao.gov/new.items/d07514.pdf.

Warning, parts of the report may make your blood boil because of the shortcomings it identifies and its explanation of the policies, practices, tortured logic and bureaucratic shortcuts the FMCSA has adopted to cope with the enormity of the responsibility assigned to it.

That is, regulating the safety of hundreds of thousands of truck and bus operators with a tiny army of inspectors.