Committee Hearings – Week of 5-25-14

The House is coming back from a lengthy Memorial Day Weekend later this week, but the Senate won’t be back until next week. The short week makes for few hearings and only two of them will be of interest to readers of this blog; a spending bill markup and an oversight hearing.

DHS Spending Bill

The Homeland Security Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee will be holding a markup hearing on Thursday of the FY 2015 spending bill for DHS. A committee print of that may be available later this week.

DHS Oversight Hearing

The House Judiciary Committee will hold an oversight hearing on the Department of Homeland Security on Thursday. These are typically pretty high-level policy type discussions so I really don’t expect much in the way of chemical security or chemical transportation security to come up in this hearing.

On the Floor

One spending bill will come to the House floor this week; HR 4660, Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act this will come to the floor under an open rule so there may be some interesting amendments including some in the cybersecurity area. The Rules Committee hearing on this bill has not been set, but it would almost have to be on Wednesday evening.

A controversial authorization bill will come to the floor on Friday; HR 4681, Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Years 2014 and 2015. This will be a less open rule, but the Rules Committee hearing on this bill has not yet been set either. Amendments have to be submitted by Wednesday afternoon, so I expect that the hearing will be Thursday evening.