Liability insurance hike left in House’s highway funding bill

From Overdrive Online.

Lawmakers on the U.S. House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure voted Wednesday to keep a provision in the proposed INVEST in America highway funding bill that would increase liability insurance minimums for trucking companies from $750,000 to $2 million.

Among a raft of amendments proposed to the initial bill draft to be voted on during Wednesday’s 19-hour marathon committee markup session was Illinois Rep. Mike Bost’s proposal to strike the liability insurance increase from the bill. The amendment was first struck down by a voice vote and later not agreed to in a roll call vote with 38 votes against the amendment and 30 for it.

Bost called the hike “ridiculous,” “unnecessary and arbitrary,” citing past analyses that showed claims exceeded the current minimum $750,000 policy limits in fewer than 1% of truck-involved crashes. Bost believed added costs, particularly in the current high-cost insurance market, felt most by new owner-operator businesses, would unnecessarily punish those with the least power to pass on those costs.

Several House T&I members rose in support of Bost’s amendment, including Rep. Garret Graves of Louisiana, who called the original proposal a “solution in search of a problem” that would “price out small truckers for being able to do their job and earn their livelihood,” adding to current inflationary pressures as well, he said.

It’s particularly onerous, said Rep. Troy Balderson of Ohio, given what he felt was a better course of action for the Congress, to “support our truckers as they’ve supported us through this pandemic.”

See the complete article at Overdrive Online.