After weeks of calls to finish the job, but no clues as to what that would look like, the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act finally has a map for the Senate. A co-sponsor lays out how the bill could move, what it needs, and where it lands if the easy route doesn’t pan out.
Reported by Powell Broadcasting’s KSCJ-AM in Sioux City, IA, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) said, “I hope we get it passed on unanimous consent. That means that it’s been hotlined by telephone to 100 members and nobody objects to it. And we can get it done in five minutes on the floor of the United States Senate.”
However, that has been attempted before. In the previous Congress, the Act had similarly not reached the floor, as then-Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) had not brought it up for a vote. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) objected when Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Ed Markey (D-MA), and Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) sought final Senate passage of the bill by unanimous consent, saying he wanted to attach an amendment ending electric vehicle subsidies.
In December 2025, NAB Senior Vice President of Government Relations Nicole Gustafson reported three senators had objected to moving the bill by unanimous consent. That number has gone without update since.
Should that fail, there is a second way forward. Sen. Grassley said, “If that’s not possible, it’s going to have to be put in the end-of-the-year bills, which could be rural health care. It could be some end-of-the-year tax bill, which would be to stop minor tax increases, or then in the end-of-the-year appropriation bills.”
The Senator’s comments suggest the odds of the AM Act getting its own individual floor vote in the Senate, as it did in the House, are slim.
The Senate companion, S. 315, has sat on the Legislative Calendar under General Orders since the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee approved it in April 2025. The House passed its version, H.R. 979, on a voice vote under suspension of the rules September 16, with 317 co-sponsors.
The NAB has released PSAs in English and Spanish asking radio listeners to contact their members of Congress by texting AM to 39179, urging them to support legislation that ensures AM radio remains in cars. Get them for your station here.
