This Who’s Who gallery, originally posted in June, features comments from key supporters and opponents of the hours-of-service restart suspension.
A suspension of the restart provisions in the hours-of-service rule is among the more controversial riders still being negotiated, but time is running out as the lame duck Congress develops its funding plan for the federal government.
The final form and language of that plan is expected to be completed by the House Friday evening and published Monday. Whether the restart provision makes it, and whether the package can pass in both the House and Senate and be signed by President Obama depends on a number of factors, most of which have little to do with trucking, Capitol Hill insiders say.
As of Friday morning, the word of the day is “cromnibus,” a CR (continuing resolution) for the Dept. of Homeland Security combined with an omnibus spending package to fund the operation of the rest of the federal government, including the Transportation Department.
This hybrid approach is a compromise to appease the most conservative House Republicans who want to fight Obama on his recently announced immigration reforms. A short-term extension of DHS funding will allow Congress to more fully debate the immigration matter next year while fully funding the rest of the government for 2015 – and avert a shutdown.
Congress is dealing with the matter in a lame duck session because it couldn’t get its act together and pass the department-focused budgets in a timely fashion earlier in the year. DOT, for example, is funded along with the Housing Department by the annual THUD appropriation.
And it was into the Senate’s THUD bill that Sen. Susan Collins inserted language to suspend certain parts of 2013’s changes to HOS rule dealing with the restart, pending study of the actual impact on safety and efficiency of the rule. After gaining bipartisan committee support, the Collins amendment faced a floor fight before the entire THUD package was stalled by procedural squabbling between party leadership.
