Movement on CFATS Authorization?

There was a brief note today on SmartBrief.com about some possible movement on passing a CFATS authorization bill. It referenced an article on EENews.net that claims that Sen. Collins (R,ME) “will seek to have the full Senate vote on her bill reauthorizing the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards program for three years”. Unfortunately EENews.net is a subscription only service so there are few details supporting that claim.

Politics

While Sen. Collins’ support for CFATS is well known, and she managed to get S 473 through the Senate Homeland Security Committee without and IST provision, I doubt that she has the political power to get her bill considered on the floor of the Senate. Too many liberal Democrats won’t back a bill that doesn’t include one or more of the following:

• Inherently Safer Technology (IST) language beyond the bill’s voluntary program;

• Worker protection against unreasonable use of security background checks;

• Worker participation in the security planning process;

• Enhanced whistleblower protection; and

• More public information about high-risk chemical facilities.

Interestingly there is no mention of her CFATS bill on her official web site and no recent mention of the bill on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs web site that she prominently shares with Sen. Lieberman (I,CT). That certainly doesn’t mean that she isn’t working behind the scenes to push for consideration of her bill, but one would expect at least some public mention on one or both of those sites.

Riders

The SmartBrief.com piece briefly mentions another option; it notes that she “may also consider attaching the bill as an amendment to other legislation”. This is certainly how the CFATS program came into being in the first place. But that was as a compromise measure while the political process could put together a more comprehensive program. With the CFATS program in place, it would be harder to justify a one-sided compromise as an alternative to the current one-year extensions of the CFATS authority.

Having said that there are two possible bills that are large enough to make CFATS a minor provision and would have some chance of garnering enough non-CFATS support to make it difficult to remove the language from the bill. Those are the DHS Authorization bill (which has yet to make to the floor in either house since 2003 when the Department was formed) or the DHS spending bill which this year will probably be added to another spending bill since the original House bill (HR 1700) was used for the Continuing Spending Act.

The problem with this process is that the attempt to add it to either bill would have to come on the Senate floor with all of the debate limitations that that entails. The Senate DHS Authorization Bill has already been marked up in the Senate Homeland Security Committee so Collins cannot attach it in Committee to that bill and her Committee does not get involved in the markup of spending bills.

There is no rule that says that the CFATS rider would have to be attached to either of these two bills, but it would be difficult (though certainly not impossible) to find another bill that is close enough in subject matter to not fly in the face of even the Senates rather loose rules about legislative subject matter. But, unless it is added during a Senate Homeland Security markup hearing, she would still have to face the debate rule problem in adding the CFATS language to another bill.

Finally, I don’t think that the Committee would let her attach the current CFATS language from S 473 to another bill. Too many people, including Chairman Lieberman, wanted to see IST language added to that bill, but acquiesced to be able to report a bipartisan bill from Committee. They went along because they knew that they could attempt to add their pet provisions (and vowed in the mark-up hearing to do so) on the floor or, failing that, they could block passage by manipulating Senate debate rules.

Possible Compromise

As I have said numerous times, I don’t think that a comprehensive CFATS authorization bill with a realistic expiration date can pass in current political climate without significant compromise between last sessions’ HR 2868 and just about any of the bills under consideration in the House or Senate (Lautenberg’s bill, S709 doesn’t count; no one is considering it even in the friendly Senate Environment and Public Works Committee).

Readers might remember that I proposed just such compromise language back in November of last year. It might be a good time for people to take a look at that as starting point for putting together a workable compromise for a long-term CFATS extension bill.