Markup of House DHS Spending Bill

The Homeland Security Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee has announced that it will hold a hearing tomorrow at 10:30 to mark-up the Subcommittee draft of the FY 2014 DHS spending bill.

CFATS

The CFATS program made it into the big leagues in this draft document; it was actually (for the first time) mentioned in the spending section of the bill. On pages 32 and 33 it says:

“Provided, That of the total amount provided for the ‘‘Infrastructure Security Compliance’’ program, project, and activity, $20,000,000 shall be withheld from obligation until the Under Secretary for the National Protection  and Programs Directorate submits to the Committees on Appropriations of the Senate and the House of Representatives an expenditure plan for the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards program that includes the number of facilities covered by the program, inspectors on-board, inspections pending, and inspections projected to be completed by September 30, 2014.”

We also have the standard one year CFATS authorization extension. This time it is in §532 and extends the program until October 4^th, 2014.

TWIC

The suggestion of the GAO about the TWIC Reader pilot will be partially fulfilled in this draft. On pages 19 and 20 it says:

“Provided, That of the funds provided under this heading,$50,000,000 shall be withheld from obligation for headquarters administration until the Administrator of the Transportation Security Administration submits to the Committees on Appropriations of the Senate and the House of Representatives detailed expenditure plans for air cargo security, checkpoint support, and explosives detection systems refurbishment, procurement, and installations on an airport-by-airport basis for fiscal year 2014 and the completion of a security assessment measuring the effectiveness of using the Transportation Worker Identification Credential [emphasis added].”