Congressional Hearings Week of 4-11-11

While the big news for the coming week in Congress will be the details of the promised compromise on the FY2011 spending bill, there will be at least three hearings that look like they will be of interest to the chemical security community. They will deal with cyber security, hazmat transportation and the TWIC. Unfortunately there are no details available yet on any of the following hearings.

Cyber Security

The Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection, and Security Technologies of the House Homeland Security Committee will be holding a hearing on Friday morning on “The DHS Cybersecurity Mission: Promoting Innovation and Securing Critical Infrastructure”. There is a good chance that control system security will receive some attention at this hearing.

Hazmat Transportation

The Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials of the House Transportation Committee will be holding a hearing on Tuesday afternoon on “Reducing Regulatory Burdens and Ensuring Safe Transportation of Hazardous Materials”. This is the second in a series of hearings looking at the Hazardous Materials Regulations and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA). Security will not probably be a specific topic, but much of what is included in the HMR may have an indirect effect on chemical security matters.

TWIC

Finally the full Transportation Committee will conduct a hearing on Thursday morning looking at “Biometric IDs for Pilots and Transportation Workers: Diary of Failures”. Sure to be addressed in this hearing will be the delays in the regulations for the use of TWIC Readers. Another issue that might come up will be the use of TWIC in other security venues like CFATS covered facilities.

FY 2011 Spending Bill

With last night’s last minute deal on a spending bill for the remainder of FY 2011 we can expect to see at least a Rule Committee hearing on the new bill that will provide the (hopefully) final extension of the current CR. There have been no details released yet about where the cuts will actually come from, but there will be somewhere near $30 Billion in additional cuts; some will probably come from DHS. As always, the devil is in the details. And, of course, we are looking to see that the CFATS authority extension is included in the bill; it almost certainly will be.

FY 2012 Spending Bills

In the brief speechifying this morning before the House vote on HR 1363 both the Chairman and Ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee promised that they would have 12 spending bills on the floor of the House before the August recess. They also promised an open process with plenty of amendments to be offered from both sides of the aisle. To achieve this goal they are going to have to step up the process on the hearings. Right now the Homeland Security Subcommittee does not have any hearings scheduled this week; that is likely to change.

What will be interesting to see is if the new ‘open’ process promised by the new Republican leadership will include publishing sub-committee drafts of the spending bills before the mark-up hearings start. That will make it much easier to understand the amendment process in their hearings.