Congress funds clean ships and bans automated ships to protect jobs.
S. 4935 — Next Generation Shipping Act · Filed by Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) · 2 cosponsors · Introduced Jun 24, 2026 · Referred to committee
Your members of Congress
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What it does
The bill sets up a $10 billion program from 2027 to 2036. It pays for ships that use clean fuel or produce zero pollution. It also pays for charging and fueling stations. The bill bans money for automated or self-driving ships. Workers on these projects must earn prevailing wages.
Who it affects
Maritime workers, ship manufacturers, ports, and clean-fuel companies benefit from funding. Port communities and the environment benefit from cleaner ships. The bill protects maritime jobs by refusing to fund automation.
One thing to notice
The bill spends $1 billion per year across 10 years and many groups. Each project may get less money because funding spreads so wide.
From the analysis of the bill text, linked under Primary records below.
Where it stands
2 cosponsors: 2 Democrats.
- Jun 24, 2026 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in Senate”
- Jun 24, 2026 — Referred to Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation · Congress.gov: “Read twice and referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
Money around this bill
2 groups reported lobbying about this bill. They filed 2 reports from Jun 2026 to Jun 2026.
Those reports show $680,000 in lobbying spending. Each report lists about 12 bills. So that money was not all for this bill.
More groups named this bill than 41% of bills with any report.
Chris Van Hollen, who sponsored the bill, received $81,250 from PACs for the 2026 election.
- American College of Cardiology — $680,000 in 1 report
- Island Institute — $0 in 1 report
Lobbying is legal. These reports show who lobbied about this bill, not what changed.
Words to know
- prevailing wages — Set pay rates for a job, usually higher than the minimum wage.
- clean fuel — Fuel that produces less pollution or no pollution when burned.
- automation — Using machines or computers to do work without people controlling them.
- lobbying — Trying to influence lawmakers about a bill. Companies and groups pay people to do this.
- PACs — Groups that collect money and give it to candidates for office.
- sponsored — To sponsor a bill is to introduce it in Congress and put your name on it.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the full bill text on Jul 9, 2026; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 14,707 analysed bills.
Status and sponsors — Congress.gov's bill record — actions, committee referrals and cosponsors — loaded nightly. The timeline shows status changes, not every procedural action.
Money — Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act filings whose specific-issue field names this bill for quarters ending Jun 2026 to Jun 2026. A filing's amount is reported whole beside the median number of bills a filing names; it is never divided across them. PAC receipts are FEC-reported contributions to the sponsor's candidate committee in the 2026 cycle.
As of — lobbying records through Jul 20, 2026 · page rendered 2026-09-23.
“Congress funds clean ships and bans automated ships to protect jobs.” QuorumCivic. https://share.quorumcivic.app/bill/119/s4935/simple Report an error