Report Filed on HR 3674 – Cybersecurity

Yesterday the House Homeland Security Committee filed their report on HR 3674, the Promoting and Enhancing Cybersecurity and Information Sharing Effectiveness Act of 2011 (The PRECISE Act). That report is not yet available from the GPO so a review of the actual report will be delayed. We know what the approved amendments said, so there will be no surprises there, but these reports frequently contain miscellaneous information of interest.

There were a couple of other interesting developments announced yesterday with the filing of this report. The following committees were ‘discharged’ from further consideration of the bill:

• Government Oversight and Reform;

• Science Space and Technology;

• Judiciary; and

• Intelligence

The broad and ineffective scope of this bill meant that the above listed committees could have had jurisdictional issues with the bill. None of the committees held any hearings on the bill and apparently their chairmen had no objections to the bill as reported by the Homeland Security Committee. Discharging them from further consideration typically means that the bill is being moved forward towards floor consideration.

That does not appear to be the case here. At the same time as these committees were discharged from further consideration the House leadership sequentially referred this bill to the Energy and Commerce Committee and gave that committee until September 21^st to consider the bill. That date is interesting as, according to the House Calendar, it would only provide one week for the bill to be considered by the whole House, the week of October 1^st. In effect this has killed the bill for possible consideration until after the election in November and probably for the remainder of the Session.