Congressional Bills Introduced 01-22-13

No, I haven’t forgotten my intent to report briefly on interesting bills as they are introduced. There just hasn’t been anything of interest until today. The first day that the Senate has been allowed to introduce bills gives us what will probably be the cybersecurity bill for consideration in that body.

Cybersecurity Legislation

S 21, A bill to secure the United States against cyber attack [that’s not the final title; we won’t know that until the bill is published], was introduced by Sen. Rockefeller (D,WV). It will be a couple of days before we will see an actual copy of the bill to be sure what it contains, but I suspect that it will be based upon something like S 3414 from last session. It will be interesting to see what changes will have been made to make it easier to get the bill to the floor of the Senate. That’s further down the road; I’m sure we will be seeing some hearings before we get there.

It is strange to look at the list of co-sponsors to the bill and not see the names Lieberman or Collins on the list. It will be interesting to see who becomes the cybersecurity broker in the Senate now that that team is no longer around.

Disappointing Bill Introductions

The 113^th Congress seems to be going a little slow in introducing legislation. The Senate only introduced 53 bills on their opening day and the House is only up to HR 350 as of yesterday. It just doesn’t seem as if their heart is in it.