CFATS Hearing Canceled

Earlier this week William_Allmond tweeted that the CFATS hearing scheduled for tomorrow would be ‘likely postponed’. The hearing did not show up on the list of scheduled hearings in Tuesday’s Congressional Record Daily Digest (pg D1004). Still as late as yesterday afternoon the hearing was still listed on House Energy and Commerce Committee web page. This morning the hearing is no longer listed on the schedule, but there is no announcement on the Committee web site as to why or when it might be rescheduled. This is the second time that the Energy and Environment Subcommittee has cancelled this hearing without notice. The last time was back in July when the Committee was tied up in trying to markup the healthcare reform bill. That does not appear to be the reason for the canceling of tomorrow’s hearing since there were two subcommittee hearings held yesterday and two are still scheduled for today. If the scheduled hearing had been for markups of HR 3258 or HR 2868 we might have assumed that the postponement of the hearing suggested on going negotiations on some significant provisions of the bills or amendments being offered. With this being an information collection hearing that would not apply. What I’m afraid of is that this indicates that Chairman Waxman is putting these two bills on the back burner, effectively killing their possibility of being passed this year. Some people in the chemical industry will be happy with the delay in the consideration of these bills. I would bet, based on past history, that if these bills are not passed this session, that next year's bills will include provisions that industry will consider to be a lot more onerous. Industry groups might find it to be in their best interest get behind passage of these two bills this year.