The Senate bill that would have suspended two of the 34-hour restart provisions included in the 2013-implemented federal hours-of-service rule was pulled from the Senate floor June 19 after disagreements over procedural rules prevented the bill from moving forward for debate.
The annual Transportation, Housing and Urban Development bill — which provides the Department of Transportation with its 2015 fiscal year funding — came to the Senate floor with an amendment by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) that would have halted the requirement that a driver’s 34-hour restart include two consecutive 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. periods and the once-per-week limit on the restart, pending a study.
Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), however, had filed an amendment for consideration by the full Senate to strip the bill of the Collins amendment but keep the requirement for further study of the rule’s efficacy.
After Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) couldn’t agree on how to move the bill forward for debate and into the amendment proposition phase, Reid pulled the bill from the Senate floor.
The American Trucking Associations (ATA) said it was very confident the Collins amendment would prevail. It also said it was confident the amendment would hold through the conference committee process, when the House and Senate confer to work out differences between their two versions of the bill.
The House’s version did not include the suspension of the restart provisions, but it did include language that would prevent the agency from moving forward with its rule to increase the minimum about of liability insurance motor carriers are required to have.
