Congressional Hearings – Week of 06-04-12

Both the Senate and House will be in town this week. That would normally mean that there would be a decent number of hearings to pay attention to. For some reason, however, there aren’t a lot of hearings scheduled in either body and none concerning the normal topics of this blog. That doesn’t mean that we can ignore Congress this week, there are two bills scheduled to make it to the floor of the House that could affect the chemical security or cybersecurity folks that read this blog; both are funding bills.

HR 5325

The first bill on the agenda (the House actually started consideration last week) is the Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2013. I haven’t mentioned this bill yet as it doesn’t have anything in the bill or the Committee Report that mentions cybersecurity. It is being considered under an open rule so that just about anything can be proposed as an amendment from the floor. I’ll be watching for anything cyber-related.

HR 5855

The big bill for this blog is the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2013. I’ve discussed the CFATS related issues in the bill’s Report. This will also be considered under an open rule so we can expect to see more in both chemical security and cybersecurity introduced on the floor. Other possible amendment topics of potential interest include port security and surface transportation security mentions.

The Majority Leader’s web site says that this bill may possibly be considered this week so we probably won’t see any action until the end of the week and it almost certainly won’t have a final vote this week. This will be well worth watching though so expect updates during the week as proposed amendments are published in the Congressional Record.