VIDEO: Calif. Assembly Members Urged To Buy American Cars

SACRAMENTO (CBS 5) - In the basement parking garage of the State Capitol you see one Toyota after another. In fact 87 of the 133 vehicles in the Assembly's fleet are Toyota hybrids. But that may be about to change.

On Thursday, the powerful Assembly Rules Committee approved a new "Buy American" policy, that discourages members of the Assembly from buying vehicles that don't have at least half their parts made in America.

Clearly Toyota is the target.

"California has been very good to Toyota. We not only gave financial incentives to them to open the NUMMI plant in Northern California, we helped the Toyota Prius go into the carpool lane. We did a lot for Toyota and now Toyota is turning its back on California," said Assemblyman Ted Lieu (D-Torrance), who chairs the Rules Committee.

"It is shutting down the NUMMI plant. It is divesting from California, and worse they won't even sit down and talk to all the stakeholders, and that's not acceptable," Lieu said.

What's ironic is that Assemblyman Lieu represents Torrance, which is Toyota's U.S. headquarters.

"This was a company that I previously supported. I helped them while on the council, I've tried to help them in the Assembly. But this is not the Toyota that I know. They have changed," Lieu said. "They have engaged in a serious pattern of denials that I have not seen before. They, if you look at their safety incidents they kept blaming driver error. They knew about sudden acceleration problems for over 9 years and did nothing about it. And they finally took action because government forced them to. That's what we're doing today."

At the State Capitol they used to have a "Buy American" policy for cars. But they got rid of it in 2003 because not enough American cars at that time were hybrids.

But now, of course, there are American hybrid alternatives, that many legislators would like to see in those Capitol garage spaces.

Get the full video here: http://cbs5.com/video/?id=61256@kpix.dayport.com