prove they will make the highways safer. “As a state, when you start trying to
expand off of a rulemaking, you can’t prove that it’s going to reduce crashes,” he said. “So why are you doing this? What is the motive and the intent of your expanding off of this rule?” The ATA’s Joyce said trucking advo-
cates currently are working with Congress through two avenues. One is the FAA’s reauthorization bill. On the House side, the Aviation, Innovation, Reform and Reauthorization Act has been marked up in the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. It contains a section by U.S. Rep. Jeff Denham, (R-California) that spe- cifically addresses meal and rest breaks and piece rate payments. It also includes a pro- vision retroactively making clear that the 1994 FAAAA law was intended to address those issues. Such a provision would help protect carriers from pending and active suits.
The bill, Joyce said, “would be a clear
message to the courts that Congress’ intent from 1994 was that states could not impose barriers to the flow of interstate commerce.” Unfortunately, it faces an uphill climb
because the provisions are not included in the Senate version. Another avenue seems more likely to
pass. That would be the transportation appropriations bill, already passed by the Senate and moving through the House. The Senate version does not include language addressing the FAAAA issue. The House version, which has made it through the House Appropriations Committee, addresses meal and rest breaks and includes the retroactive provision but does not include the piece rate issue. Joyce is more optimistic about this route. “I’m hopeful that it can still happen,
yep,” he said. “Transportation has typically been one of the more bipartisan areas, but as we’ve seen in election years past, even the most bipartisan of legislation can get bogged down in political debates on things that are totally unrelated to transporta- tion.”
Among those unrelated things are a
controversial issue – like, for example, who can use what bathroom – that can stop a bill cold. Another issue, of course, is the
Summer 2016 49
political calendar. As readers might have noticed, this is an election year. Congress shuts down for the political conventions, and then August is the summer recess. “I’m not sure that they do a whole lot
when they come back in September,” Joyce said. “They’re scheduled to be here after Labor Day for three or four weeks in September, and I’m not sure that they’re going to have an appetite to do a whole lot then, especially if they don’t have the appe- tite to do stuff between June and July.” That means that, if the issue hasn’t
been settled by early fall, it might have to wait until the lame-duck session between the election and the swearing in of the new Congress. But even that’s not a guarantee. In this year’s election, Republicans, who have the majority, are defending 24 seats while Democrats are defending only 10, so the chance of Senate control switching par- ties is reasonably good. If that happens, Senate Democrats might be reluctant to compromise during the lame-duck session knowing they will control that body come January.
“The concern after the election is that
if Democrats take over control of the Senate, that the whole place sort of shuts down,” Joyce said. “What interest do they have in compromise on legislation, and do they punt some of these things into the next Congress?” Depressed yet? The good news is
transportation is one of the few issues that brings Republicans and Democrats togeth- er. Joyce said the ATA is in touch with the offices of elected officials on the other side, including Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-California. He said that even states’ rights supporters in Congress, who on other issues might side with a state manag- ing its own affairs, “understand clearly that this California notion is one that is easily fraught with peril.” In other words, the ATA is still fight-
ing for FAAAA. “We operate on the notion that things
will move, and that’s the way we have to operate, and so we look for every vehicle, every opportunity we can find to move leg- islation across the finish line,” Joyce said. R
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Award-Winning Publication of Texas Trucking Association Volume 81, Number 1 • Summer 2016 • $4.95
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