Bills Introduced – 08-04-15

There were 25 bills introduced yesterday in the House and Senate even though the House only met in pro forma session. Two of those bills may be of specific interest to readers of this blog:

H Con Res 72 Providing for a conditional adjournment of the House of Representatives and a conditional recess or adjournment of the Senate. Rep. Denham, Jeff [R-CA-10] 

S 1920 A bill to require the Comptroller General of the United States to develop and submit to Congress a biennial report on the current state of the skills gap in the United States, as of the date of the report, that includes an analysis of the effectiveness of efforts to close the skills gap and policy recommendations to improve such efforts, and for other purposes. Sen. Donnelly, Joe [D-IN]

Actually H Con Res 72 is only of interest because it shows that legislation can actually be passed in the House with the House out-of-town; in this case during their summer recess. This resolution actually sets the parameters of that recess. There is no record of who was present at this session beyond Rep. Denham (R,CA), Speaker pro tempore for the day. Typically I would suspect that there would be two more congresscritters on-hand (one Democrat and one Republican) just to keep everybody honest. Legislation like this is typically passed ‘without objection’ but according to the Congressional Record for this resolution it was simply ‘agreed to’. This will be the last reference to this resolution in this blog.

The Senate bill may or may not be of interest. The ‘skills gap’ referred to in the title could be anything or everything (I hope not). If it is specifically described as, or specifically includes, a cybersecurity skills gap, I will continue to monitor the progress of the bill.