Bills Introduced – 11-16-15

With both the House and Senate in Washington this week there were 36 bills introduced yesterday. Of those three may be of specific interest to readers of this blog:

HR 3996 To provide an extension of Federal-aid highway, highway safety, motor carrier safety, transit, and other programs funded out of the Highway Trust Fund, and for other purposes. Rep. Shuster, Bill [R-PA-9]

HR 4002 To amend title 18, United States Code, to make various improvements in Federal criminal law, and for other purposes. Rep. Sensenbrenner, F. James, Jr. [R-WI-5]

HR 4009 To amend chapter 44 of title 18, United States Code, to treat flamethrowers the same as machineguns. Rep. Engel, Eliot L. [D-NY-16] 

As I mentioned yesterday HR 3996 is a two-week extension of the surface transportation funding to allow the Conference Committee to work out the differences on HR 22. It was passed yesterday, as expected, on a voice vote after only 7 minutes of ‘debate’.

This will probably be the last mention of HR 4002 as this is probably just a housekeeping bill; updating and correcting 18 USC. There is a chance however that it will include revisions to the computer fraud language. If it does, you will see it here again.

HR 4009 is not one of the normal topics of this blog, but I just could not resist mentioning it. I will be very interested how they define ‘flame thrower’ in a way that does not include welding equipment or weed burners. If the news is slow and the definition interesting enough it may make it into the blog; probably not.