Congressional Hearings – Week of 3-30-13

Both the House and Senate will be in session this week. Budget and spending matters continue to dominate the hearing schedule, but only one of those will be of specific interest to readers of this blog. There is also a hearing this week on the reauthorization of the Hazardous Materials Regulations.

Budget

The table below shows the hearing status of the various agencies of specific interest to readers of this blog and when the hearing have been / will be held on the President’s budget request for them.

Agency	House Approp.	House Oversight	Senate Approp.	Senate Oversight
DHS	3-11-14	3-13-14	3-11-14	3-13-14
DOT	3-12-14	3-12-14	3-13-14
Defense	3-13-14	3-6-14	NA	NA
CG	3-12-14	3-26-14
FEMA	3-26-14	3-25-14		3-13-14
TSA	3-25-14

The hearing I mentioned above does not fit on this table because it isn’t specifically about the President’s budget. It is related to transportation safety so I’ll discuss it below. Please note that I’ve added ‘NA’ to the Senate side of the hearing table for ‘Defense’; they break out the hearings for defense spending into much smaller pieces so there is no single date that would fit into this block. In the unlikely event that they do a specific cybersecurity defense hearing I’ll replace the NA with that date.

Transportation Safety

The Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials Subcommittee of the Senate Transportation and Infrastructure Committee will be holding a hearing looking at “Examining Issues for Hazardous Materials Reauthorization” on Wednesday. By definition chemical transportation safety will be the topic for this hearing.

The witness list includes:

• Cynthia Quarterman, PHMSA;

• William F. Downey, American Trucking Association;

• Thomas E. Schick, American Chemistry Council;

• Stephen Pelkey, American Pyrotechnics Association; and

• Kevin O'Connor, International Association of Fire Fighters

With the absence of any railroad or petroleum industry witnesses I don’t suspect that the crude oil classification issue will get much discussion, though it will probably be mentioned.

The Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee will be holding an oversight hearing looking at the DOT Modes (FAA, FHA, FRA, FTA, PHMSA, FMCSA and MA). Witnesses will include representatives from each of these agencies.

Chemical Transportation Safety will be one of the topics that will come up with a possible mention of the crude oil train safety issue.

House Floor

The Majority Leader’s web site shows mainly political posturing bills being considered by the House this week, as I would expect to see through the first Tuesday in November. Tuesday will be the day of bipartisanship this week with a number of bills being considered under suspension of the rules. The only bill of specific interest here will be HR 4005, the Coast Guard Authorization bill that I discussed in an earlier post.