The massive Democratic Party win on Election Day will have implications for government rules and regulations on trucking, including the so-called highway bill, driven in part by changes in the lineups of who will sit on Congress’ transportation-focused committees.
There are several members of the House Transportation & Infrastructure (T&I) committee who won’t be around next year, including committee chairman Missouri’s Sam Graves, who is retiring.
But the trucking industry is for now most interested in the fate of David Rouzer of North Carolina’s 7th district. At publication time, data showed him with a slim margin in a race that had not been called in his favor by the Associated Press or any other agency.
Rouzer is a member of the T&I Committee and chairman of the Highway and Transit subcommittee. Even if he holds on to his seat he would no longer head that subcommittee, given the shift in control.
Rouzer is seen as an important ally in Congress for the trucking community. With Graves’ retirement, Rouzer would potentially be the ranking member on the T&I committee.
Changes at the top and down below
Under Democratic control, the chairman of the T&I committee will be Rick Larsen of Washington, currently the ranking member.
Retirements are costing the committee nine members from the two parties combined. Beyond that, there were several Republican members–no Democrats–who were defeated for re-election, were departing the House to run in a race for another office or whose race as of Wednesday was still to be called, including the Rouzer election.
On the Senate side, the Commerce, Science & Transportation Committee will see chairman Ted Cruz of Texas be replaced by current ranking member Maria Cantwell of Washington. The committee’s membership was altered only slightly by the election results, with Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee departing to become governor of her state, and Dan Sullivan of Alaska still locked in a tight vote counting process to determine whether he will return to Washington in 2027.
Current governing law expires 12/11
The last trucking-related action taken by the outgoing Congress occurred in the T&I Committee, when it overwhelmingly passed the BUILD America 250 Act, but referred to colloquially as the “highway bill.”
It has not advanced past that point. Current funding under the existing highway bill expires December 11.
The bill that passed the T&I committee in May had several provisions that had been sought by the trucking industry, including a total $750 million allotment over five years to boost truck parking capacity.
Jim Mullen, the president of the Truckload Carriers Association, said in an interview with FreightWaves that he would expect the highway bill to be “punted” until the incoming Congress is seated. As for the December expiration of current funding, Mullen said he would expect the lame duck Congress to pass an extension that would run into June.
There wouldn’t be much effort to make changes via the extension, according to Mullen. “I would think it’d be a pretty clean extension,” he said. “I wouldn’t think there’d be any sort of policy riders.”
But what will come in the next bill may not be identical to what was approved in May, Mullen said. The parking provisions, he added, are likely to make the cut into a new bill.
What will be in the new law?
Certain provisions in the more than 1,000-page highway bill that would need to be reintroduced in a new Congress could have some Democratic policy footprints on it, according to Mullen.
For example, the highway bill includes a call for the Secretary of Transportation to lead an “Autonomous Vehicle Accessibility Study” to be carried out by the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies. The goal of the study would be to create a framework for government oversight of autonomous vehicles where necessary, but it’s seen as a pro-autonomous vehicle provision rather than a hindrance.
“I’m not sure if the Democrats will keep that in there or not,” Mullen said. “I think there might be a push among the Democrats with labor concerns to take that out.”
The highway bill did include a provision that would require trucking companies that utilize an independent owner operator through a lease-purchase agreement to provide the lease owner with a form that discloses a variety of provisions in the agreement, including compensation levels, average weekly mileage, and information on the number of drivers who actually use the program to purchase a truck at the end of the lease, which has always been a selling point of the deals.
“The Secretary may carry out a public awareness campaign to increase awareness of how standard lease-purchase programs work,” the bill says.
Another stab at higher insurance minimums?
Mullen said that while the highway bill passed by the committee does not have a provision that calls for higher minimum insurance coverage beyond the current $750,000, an effort had been made to put it in the legislation “that eventually got stripped out.”
An earlier attempt in 2020 also did not succeed. “So my suspicion is that you’ll see a provision in the revised bill,” Mullen said.
The American Trucking Associations, in a statement released to FreightWaves, said work on the highway bill “is an opportunity to show that divided government doesn’t have to mean dysfunctional government. But the current Congress still has work to finish, including bipartisan legislation to combat organized cargo theft and freight fraud.”
One piece of legislation that received a great deal of attention but ultimately went no further than the T&I Committee was Dalilah’s Law, which passed out of the committee in March.
Rep. Rouzer introduced the bill. But after the T&I approval, a companion bill in the Senate did not get even a hearing at the corresponding committee in that chamber.
Daliliah’s Law fate
The legislation is named after Dalilah Coleman, a young girl from California who in 2024 was seriously injured in a crash where the truck involved in the collision was driven by a person in the U.S. illegally.
Democrats in the committee voted against Dalilah’s Law mostly in opposition to the bill’s English language proficiency requirements for CDL holders. Larsen, coming in as chair of the committee, said in March that the provision is redundant to other regulations, such as the tightening of standards earlier this year.
They also objected to provisions that they said would so severely restrict the ability of non-domiciled persons to legally obtain a CDL that non-citizens with DACA status could not ever become a driver.
“Maybe the Democrats will have a provision in (a new highway bill) on non-domiciled drivers, but would allow DACA folks to continue to have credentials,” Mullen said. “I think there is a high probability they will address the non-domiciled issue, but in a different fashion.”
The tighter rule on non-domiciled drivers is under a judge’s consideration now in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Oral arguments in the case were made in September.
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