WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate has approved legislation aimed at making it easier for military veterans to obtain a commercial driver’s license.
The Veteran Improvement Commercial Driver License Act of 2023 was discharged from the Committee on Veterans Affairs and considered and passed by the full Senate by unanimous consent on Thursday.
The legislation, backed by the American Trucking Associations and the Commercial Vehicle Training Association, removes a two-year waiting period currently required for certain CDL schools that veterans may want to attend and pay for using their GI Bill benefits.
Under current law, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is barred from approving CDL courses offered at secondary branches of an educational institution if the branch has been operating for less than two years.
The legislation removes that barrier by allowing the VA to approve a CDL program for veterans at a new branch as long as it is appropriately licensed by the state and uses the same curriculum as the program at the primary institution that has previously been approved.
An identical bill introduced last year in the U.S. House of Representatives is getting more scrutiny.
During a House veterans affairs subcommittee hearing on Thursday, Joseph Westcott, legislative director for the National Association of State Approving Agencies, warned that the legislation in its current form — which is identical to the Senate version — “sweeps away veteran protections” provided by the two-year waiting period.
The waiting period, he said, is meant to prohibit veterans from enrolling in low-standard, fly-by-night truck driving schools by giving the branch school enough time to demonstrate it is stable and has a quality curriculum.
“This bill, as presently drafted, only requires that an institution offer the same curriculum as a previously state-approved institution anywhere in the nation,” Westcott said. “A truck driving school could request immediate approval of a ‘branch’ campus anywhere in the nation, and the [state approval agency] of jurisdiction would have no records (graduation rate, CDL pass rate, or job placement) to determine the approvability of the program.
“If we don’t safeguard that, then we would be in the situation where somebody could get approval in the state of Idaho, and now the two-year rule is effectively swept away in North Carolina. That’s concerning to me.”
But subcommittee Chairman Derrick Van Orden, R-Wisc., was concerned that pushback from state approval agencies over the bill’s language could undermine the bill’s passage, especially if it keeps CDL branch schools from being approved that happen to be in another state but are still located close to the primary school.
However, “we’re going to work with you on this,” he told Westcott. “Truck driving is a fantastic job, and if we can get our guys and gals behind the wheel and actively employed it would be fantastic.”