Congressional Hearings – Week of 12-03-12

Congress is steadily puddling along taking care of make work while backroom negotiations are dealing with the real problems that will eventually be voted upon. The Hurricane Sandy response will catch some attention this week, but not much else is on the official agenda for committees this week.

CG Authorization

According to the House Majority Leader’s web site the House will consider adopting the Senate amendments to HR 2838, the Coast Guard Authorization bill for 2013. As I noted in an earlier blog post this is a wholesale revision of the bill passed by the House and if there is any discussion on the floor before the vote considered under the suspension of rules (60% required for passage) it may be the first time that some of the new provisions have been debated in any congressional forum.

In any case there are no MTSA or chemical safety/security provisions in this bill. It seems that Congress is no longer interested in the security missions of the Coast Guard.

DOD Authorization

The Senate will continue to consider the DOD Authorization bill (S 3254). They cleared a large number of amendments last week and there is a cloture vote scheduled for this afternoon. There were some cybersecurity/warfare amendments adopted last week; I’ll look at them in some detail later today.

This bill will certainly pass in the Senate this week and should clear the House next week.