What a Democratic Congress means for trucking in 2027

Trucking legislation in 2027 won't start from scratch. It's going to start from a stack of bills that have been filed, refiled and renamed for close to a decade

Trucking legislation in 2027 won’t start from scratch. It’s going to start from a stack of bills that have been filed, refiled and renamed for close to a decade, and on Jan. 3 the lawmakers who wrote most of them take control of the committees that decide what moves.

ABC News projected early on Nov. 4 that Democrats had won control of both the House and the Senate. They did not win a veto-proof Congress. That fact shapes everything below, because the question for carriers isn’t whether they’ll file these bills again. They will. The question is which ones can get past a Senate filibuster and a president who has already shown he will use the veto pen, and which ones get stapled to a bill he can’t afford to kill.

I went back through the record. Not social media summaries. The bill numbers, the sponsors, the votes and the rulemakings. Here’s what comes back.

The $5 million insurance minimum

The federal minimum for general freight has sat at $750,000 since 1980. Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García, D-Ill., has tried to raise it in every Congress since 2019. His INSURANCE Act sought roughly $4.9 million in 2019 and $5 million in 2021. Neither moved. In December 2023, he and Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., filed H.R. 6884, the Fair Compensation for Truck Crash Victims Act, at $5 million. That died too.

On April 9, 2026, García and Rep. Derek Tran (D-Calif.) filed it again as H.R. 8218. This version raises it to $5 million and indexes it to inflation, so it rises automatically after it passes. Cosponsors include Reps. Jared Huffman and John Garamendi of California, Steve Cohen of Tennessee and Hank Johnson. It never got a hearing under Republican control.

A Democratic House has already passed an insurance increase, twice. The House version of the 2020 highway bill raised the minimum to $2 million. In 2021, the INVEST in America Act, H.R. 3684, passed the House 221 to 201 on July 1 with the same $2 million floor, an inflation adjustment every five years, an automatic emergency braking mandate and a push on sleep apnea screening. Both times, the Senate stripped the insurance hike, and the final Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act signed in November 2021 left the $750,000 minimum alone.

So the realistic 2027 threat isn’t H.R. 8218 passing on its own. It’s a number somewhere between $750,000 and $5 million riding inside a highway bill.

Side underride guards

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., first filed the Stop Underrides Act in December 2017, with Reps. Steve Cohen and Mark DeSaulnier, D-Calif., in the House. It came back in 2019 and again in March 2021, when Republican Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina joined. That history matters. This started as a bipartisan bill.

The 2021 infrastructure law took the rear-guard pieces and turned side guards into a research-and-advisory-committee assignment. That led to NHTSA’s 2022 rear underride rule and a 2023 advance notice on side guards that hasn’t moved since.

Stop Underrides Act 2.0, S. 3775 and H.R. 7354, was introduced Feb. 4, 2026, by Gillibrand, Sen. Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., Cohen, DeSaulnier and Rep. Deborah Ross, D-N.C. No Republicans signed on this time. It orders DOT to finish a rule within 18 months requiring side guards on new trailers, semitrailers, and single-unit trucks to stop intrusion in perpendicular strikes up to 40 mph. It targets new equipment rather than retrofits, and it restarts the advisory committee.

NHTSA estimated the equipment and installation alone at $3,740 or more per trailer, plus 450 to 800 pounds of added weight. Opponents point to NHTSA’s own analysis, which puts the total cost as high as $1.2 billion while saving fewer than 20 lives a year. Supporters put underride deaths at 300 or more a year and say the federal crash data undercounts them. Both of those numbers will be read into the record in 2027.

Speed limiters

FMCSA and NHTSA proposed a speed limiter rule on Sept. 7, 2016. FMCSA tried to revive it with a supplemental notice in May 2022. On July 24, 2025, both agencies withdrew all of it in the Federal Register at 90 FR 34822, citing data gaps. FMCSA said about 300 of the 15,638 comments it received supported moving forward.

Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., and the late Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., filed the Cullum Owings Large Truck Safe Operating Speed Act in 2019, and Rep. Lucy McBath, D-Ga., and Rep. John Katko, R-N.Y., filed it in 2021. Notice the Republicans. Some large carriers and Road Safe America have backed limiters for years. OOIDA has fought them for just as long.

I haven’t found a speed limiter bill filed in the current Congress. Right now, what exists is expectation, not legislation. With this administration’s rule withdrawn, the only path back is for Congress to write it into statute, and that runs straight into the filibuster and the veto.

Automatic emergency braking

This one is already law, which is why it’s different. The 2021 infrastructure law ordered DOT to write an AEB standard for heavy trucks. NHTSA and FMCSA proposed one in June 2023 covering vehicles over 10,000 pounds. The Trump administration didn’t withdraw it. The July 2026 regulatory agenda lists a supplemental proposal on heavy truck AEB because the statutory mandate remains on the books.

A Democratic Congress doesn’t need a new bill here. It needs oversight hearings asking why a rule required by a 2021 law still isn’t final, and appropriations language with deadlines. Expect both.

The ABC test and the owner-operator model

This may be the biggest one for owner-operators, and it doesn’t come through the transportation committees at all. The PRO Act, now named for the late AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka, would write California’s ABC test into the National Labor Relations Act to decide who is an employee for union purposes. The B prong is the problem. On its face, a leased owner-operator hauling freight for a motor carrier is doing work in the carrier’s usual course of business.

The House passed the PRO Act in 2020 and again on March 9, 2021. It died in the Senate both times for lack of 60 votes. It was reintroduced in March 2025. OOIDA has opposed it every time, arguing that a test written for union organizing will get borrowed for other laws. Supporters say misclassification, especially in lease-purchase programs, is real and widespread. OOIDA agrees, and says the fix is to target predatory lease-purchase deals, not erase the leased model.

The wild card is that Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer was one of only three Republicans to cosponsor the PRO Act when she was in the House.

The ones truckers may like

Not every Democratic bill cuts against drivers, and pretending otherwise would be bad reporting. The Guaranteeing Overtime for Truckers Act would repeal the motor carrier exemption from the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act, which keeps employee drivers from guaranteed time-and-a-half after 40 hours. Sens. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., and Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., along with Rep. Jeff Van Drew, R-NJ, reintroduced it in March 2025. OOIDA and the Teamsters support it. The American Trucking Associations opposes it, with ATA President Chris Spear calling it an attempt to boost trial attorneys’ fees. Paying drivers by the hour also prices detention time, which is why shippers and receivers will fight it too.

English proficiency and non-domiciled CDLs

This is where Democrats are on the defensive. FMCSA’s final rule restricting non-domiciled CDLs was published Feb. 13, 2026, and took effect March 16. Two days later, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee approved Dalilah’s Law, H.R. 5688, on a party-line vote. It would put English proficiency enforcement and limits on non-domiciled individuals into law.

Committee Democrats called the bill xenophobic and offered amendments, none adopted. But Rep. Rick Larsen of Washington, the committee’s top Democrat, said English proficiency enforcement has “a legitimate nexus to safety.” He objected to removing CDL eligibility from non-citizens with legal work authorization. That suggests where this will likely land. Dalilah’s Law will likely pass in a Democratic House. A straight repeal of ELP enforcement is unlikely. Expect hearings, letters to Secretary Sean Duffy and fights over how the non-domiciled rule is enforced, not a rollback statute.

The highway bill is the real vehicle

Everything above runs through one deadline. The highway programs in the 2021 infrastructure law expired Sept. 30, 2026. Congress extended them to Dec. 11 in a continuing resolution passed Sept. 1. The House committee’s replacement, the five-year, $580 billion BUILD America 250 Act, H.R. 8870, cleared committee 62 to 2 on May 22 and hasn’t moved since.

That bill, written by Chairman Sam Graves, R-Mo., and Larsen, carries $750 million for truck parking, tougher new entrant and broker standards and lease-purchase provisions. OOIDA called it the most pro-trucker highway bill in recent memory. It includes no insurance increase and no side-guard mandate.

Graves isn’t running again. If the lame duck doesn’t pass BUILD America 250 by Dec. 11, Congress will most likely pass another extension and the bill gets rewritten in 2027, with Larsen in line to chair House T&I. In 2020 and 2021, the Democratic House used its highway bill to carry the $2 million minimum, AEB and underride language. There’s no reason to think 2027 is different.

Will Trump veto them?

Start with the filibuster; most of these bills die before the veto question comes up. A Democratic Senate majority short of 60 can’t pass the PRO Act, H.R. 8218 or a speed limiter mandate on their own. That’s exactly where the PRO Act died in 2021, when Democrats held the Senate.

If it reaches the desk, the record says Trump will veto it. He issued 10 vetoes in his first term, all in his last two years, when Democrats held the House. In this term, he has issued two so far, both on Dec. 29, 2025, against bipartisan infrastructure bills. The House sustained both on Jan. 8, 2026, even with more than 20 Republicans voting to override each one. His administration withdrew the speed limiter rule and built its trucking agenda around deregulation and enforcement of English proficiency. A standalone speed limiter, insurance or ABC test bill would be a likely veto, and Democrats don’t have the votes to override.

The highway bill is a different animal. It’s must-pass. It moves billions to every state. Trump signed a one-year highway extension in 2020. Vetoing a full reauthorization over one trucking rider means vetoing road money in all 50 states. That’s the play to watch. A trimmed insurance increase, a side guard rulemaking deadline or AEB deadlines written into a bill too big to kill.

The odds aren’t even across the board, either. Republican cosponsors and OOIDA back overtime pay for drivers, and it’s the one bill on this list a populist White House might like.

What carriers should do now

Price the insurance scenario before your next renewal, not after a markup. Know your current limits, what $1 million and $2 million would cost you, and what a $5 million floor would do to a five-truck operation. Spec AEB on the trucks you’re buying anyway, because that mandate is already statute. If you run leased owner-operators, clean up the lease agreements now, because sloppy lease-purchase programs are the strongest evidence for an ABC test. And call your members of Congress while these are still drafts. Every one of these bills got shaped in committee the last time around.

None of these ideas are new. The difference starting Jan. 3 is who holds the gavel.