A few prominent trucking policy reforms could be on tap in Congress in the coming weeks and months as lawmakers return to Washington from their annual August recess. Most prominently, lawmakers could take up a bill — or a rider to a must-pass spending bill — to delay the compliance date of the looming electronic logging device mandate.
Here’s a look at the trucking-related bills and provisions potentially upcoming this Congressional session:
ELD mandate delays: A bill was filed in the House in July that would delay the compliance date of U.S. DOT’s ELD mandate to December 2019. The bill has garnered more than 40 co-sponsors in recent weeks, but it’s unclear whether the bill could ultimately prevail in the House or in the Senate. No such bill has yet been filed in the Senate.
However, reports in recent weeks have indicated that Rep. Brian Babin (R-Texas), who introduced the two-page bill, could try to attach the ELD delay to a larger bill as an amendment. Such a scenario could provide a more direct path for the legislation to be passed and enacted.
Lawmakers have just 12 days to pass a short-term spending bill to keep the government funded past Sept. 30, the date at which current appropriations expire. The ELD delay language could be attached to the short-term bill or a longer-term bill later. It’s not yet clear how lawmakers will tackle the looming funding deadline, but any efforts in the current 12-day session that starts Sept. 5 will be expedited, and Congressional leaders may choose to forgo policy riders as a means to ensure the bill’s passage.
Included in a separate House bill, the chamber’s legislation to fund the U.S. DOT through the 2018 fiscal year, is a more-limited ELD exemption. It would give livestock haulers an extra year to switch from paper logs to an ELD.
The Senate’s DOT appropriations bill, however, includes no such exemption for livestockers.
