Congressional Hearings – Week of 7-28-13

This is the last week before the long summer recess and Congress is going to try to get a lot of stuff done. With that said there are only four hearings currently on the schedule (and one promised) that may be of specific interest to the chemical safety/security and cybersecurity communities; DOD spending, one CFATS hearing, one chemical safety hearing and maybe a cybersecurity hearing.

CFATS

The Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection, and Security Technologies Subcommittee of the House Homeland Security Committee will be holding a hearing on Thursday on "West Fertilizer, Off the Grid: The Problem of Unidentified Chemical Facilities." No witness list is currently available, but we can be assured that David Wulf, the ISCD Director will be there. The other perennial favorite Rand Beers has been temporarily bumped upstairs so there is no telling who will be representing NPPD.

Chemical Safety

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will be holding a hearing on Wednesday looking at “Strengthening Public Health Protections by Addressing Toxic Chemical Threats.” This could be a chemical security hearing, no witness list to judge by, but I suspect this will be a look at Sen. Boxer’s re-work of the late Sen. Lautenberg’s TSCA bill (S 1009).

DOD Spending

There will be two mark-up hearings this week in the Senate for the FY 2014 DOD spending bill, the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Tuesday and the full Appropriations Committee on Thursday. We might see the bill published before the Senate heads home Friday.

Cybersecurity

The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee is supposedly going to be holding a markup hearing this week on S 1353, Senator Rockefeller’s Cybersecurity Framework me-too bill. We still haven’t seen an official version of the bill in print nor is there anything on the Committee web site about a hearing, but there are news reports that this will be coming this week.

Floor Action

The Senate will resume consideration of the Transportation spending bill (S 1243) today. When it passes the Senate will hold off further action until the House adopts HR 2610 later this week. The Senate will then substitute the S 1243 language for the House language and send the bill to conference. There are big differences on overall spending here so this one could get ugly.