More Congressional Hearings – June 10th

Two additions have been made to the hearing schedule for two House committees; Homeland Security and Energy and Commerce. The Homeland Security Committee subcommittee budget hearing will almost certainly be of interest to the chemical security community and it remains to be seen what the Energy and Commerce Committee hearing will actually look at in their markup session. The Subcommittee on Transportation Security and Infrastructure Protection of the Homeland Security Committee will hold a budget hearing tomorrow at 2:00 pm EDT. They will look at the budget for the National Protection and Programs Directorate (the home of CFATS) and TSA. Both of those budgets will have significant effects on chemical security issues in 2010. The Energy and Commerce Committee is holding an “Open Markup” session at 1:30 tomorrow. There is no information on their web page as to what bills might be considered; I suppose that’s why it is called an ‘Open Markup’. We’ll know what they marked-up after they are done. I don’t expect that it will be any major bills. I won’t be able to watch either hearing live, so I will probably have a report some time Thursday afternoon.