And the fight about the proposed Hours of Service (HOS) rule change rages on in the Senate, state by state. This week, a New Hampshire Republican senator, Kelly Ayotte, filed an amendment to an appropriations bill, seeking to block the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration from putting the proposed trucking legislation into place.
On Monday, Ayotte filed Amendment 754 to H.R. 2112, the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2012. It says, “None of the funds made available under this heading may be used to finalize, enforce, or implement the Hours of Service regulations proposed by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration on December 29, 2010.”
The HOS rule would return the limit for time a truck driver may remain on the road from 11 to 10 consecutive hours. It is scheduled for publication on October 28, but it still has to go to the Office of Management and Budget — which rarely reviews a proposed rulemaking in just two weeks.
Note that this gambit isn’t new. In 2009, Congress ended the original cross-border demonstration project when lawmakers slapped an amendment onto an appropriations bill, forbidding the DOT from running that project on federal funds.
