Homeland Security Committee Amends and Reports 10 Bills

This afternoon the House Homeland Security Committee held a markup hearing to address 10 pieces of proposed legislation. All ten bills were approved (many after being amended) on voice votes. Two of the bills, as I mentioned in an earlier post, may be of specific interest to readers of this blog:

HR 1073, the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act; and

HR 2786, the Cross-Border Rail Security Act of 2015

HR 1073

The Committee web site for this hearing had mentioned as early as Tuesday that an amendment in the form of a substitute would be offered by Rep. Perry (R,PA). I mentioned earlier that the amendment was mainly about some word changes that had no practical effect on the bill. There was an amendment offered to the Perry substitute by Rep. Thompson (D,MS). It was a another set of word changes that don’t really make a difference. They included:

∙ Substituting “national planning frameworks” for “national planning scenarios”; and

∙ Substituting “emergency response providers” for “emergency responders”.

Both amendments were adopted by voice votes.

HR 2786

There were no amendments offered on HR 2786 so it was adopted as introduced, again by a voice vote

Moving Forward

Both of these bills look like strong prospects to move forward to the House floor for consideration. If they do, they will almost certainly be considered under suspension of the rules (no amendments) and will receive broad bipartisan support.