Congress Returns on Tuesday

The summer congressional recess ends next Tuesday afternoon. No doubt there are a large number of controversial items on the agenda when they get back to work, but I’ll try to concentrate on just those of potential interest to the Chemical Security Community. DHS Budget Bill Both the House and the Senate passed slightly different version of the Administration’s DHS budget bill well before the summer recess. All that remains now is for the Conference Committee to get together and iron out the differences between the two versions. The Senate named their members of the Conference when they passed the bill back on July 9th, the House has yet to name their Conferees. There really should be no problem to work out the differences and get the final bill passed and signed. Both houses agreed to the provision extending the CFATS authorization for one year so that will almost certainly be in the final bill. CFATS Extension Bill HR 2868, the House bill that would extend CFATS coverage and make it permanent still needs to be considered by the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the House Judiciary Committee before September 30th (that date could of course be extended). The Energy and Environment Subcommittee has a hearing scheduled on HR 2868 and its companion bill HR 3258 for 9-11. Green Peace and a number of other environmental groups have been making a concerted publicity push in local and regional newspaper throughout the break to get this bill passed. They have been using their standard argument of eliminating dangerous chemicals at specific plants as the basis for those local pushes. While the articles have all been written by local activists, they have pretty much used the same general template. SOCMA and the ACC have both pushed back at each of these pushes by the pro-IST activist with letters to the editors of these papers countering the arguments and pointing out the progress made to date in protecting these local facilities from terrorist attack. Again these letters were signed by local chemical industry executives, but they also used a common template to formulate their replies. Interestingly they all pointed out that the Administration supported a one-year extension of the current CFATS regulation to avoid proceeding too quickly on the IST issue. In my mind it is still an open question if these bills will come to floor votes this year or not. There is a much higher probability of making it to the floor of the House than the Senate since nobody in that body is currently banging the chemical security drum the way that Chairmen Thompson and Waxman are. There is still a possibility that this will pass before the Congress closes up for the year, but it will depend on how large and bloody the fight gets on the health care and global warming issues. Cyber Security Issues There are a number of cyber security bills that might yet get considered in committee. The strongest possibility to date is the Senate bill S 773 that is supported by both Rockefeller (D, WV) and Snow (R,ME). That has faced some criticism for its ‘control of the Internet’ issue, but rumors are going around that there is a new, less threatening version being circulated in the halls of the Senate. There isn’t really much in there about control system issues. Chairman Thompson’s bill in the House (HR 2195) does address control systems issues, but only in the electrical power industry. We’ll probably see hearings on both bills later this year, but not much more. Hearings Next Week Congress is still out of town so it is not unusual that most committees have not yet update their web sites (the House Homeland Security site is still officially in August), but there are two chemically related hearings that have been posted for next week. First, the previously mentioned Energy and Environment Subcommittee hearing on Friday at 10:00 a.m. on HR 3258 and HR 2868 is now post, but without any details about who will be there. The other newly posted hearing will be before the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on Thursday at 10:00 a.m.. It will look at Hazardous Material Safety and the Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration (PHMSA). No details available yet on that hearing either.