Congressional Hearings Week of 5-30-11

The Senate is taking a week off from their busy debate schedule (technically they’ll meet Tuesday and Friday in ‘pro forma’ sessions) so we only have to keep track of the House this week. Even so we have three hearings currently scheduled this week that might be of interest to the chemical security community, a cyber security related hearing, a TSA authorization hearing and probably most importantly the FY 2011 DHS budget bill HR 2017.

Cyber Security

The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform will be holding a hearing on Wednesday looking at “Cybersecurity: Assessing the Nation’s Ability to Address the Growing Cyber Threat”. No details about witnesses are yet available on the Committee web site, but this is supposed to be part of a series of ‘in depth’ hearings by this Committee on cyber security related issues. There could always be a mention or two about control system security.

TSA Authorization

The Homeland Security Committee’s Transportation Security Subcommittee will be holding a hearing on authorizing the Transportation Security Administration of DHS. This hearing was postponed from last week. There is no TSA authorization bill currently available for review, but I would not be surprised to see one published this week.

HR 2017

As I mentioned earlier this week HR 2017, the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2012, was introduced last week and is scheduled for a Rules Committee hearing on Tuesday. This hearing will establish the rule for the floor consideration of this bill later this week. There are, as of yet, no proposed amendments listed on the Rules Committee web site, but I would expect that to change during the day Tuesday.