Committee Hearings – Week of 11-1-15

With both the House and Senate in Washington this week there will only be three committee hearings that may be of specific interest to readers of this blog. The House Rules Committee will hold two hearings to look at consideration of a surface transportation authorization bill and the House Homeland Security Committee will mark-up a number of bills.

STA Rules Committee Hearing

The House Rules Committee will be holding two hearings this week trying to reconcile two different versions of the Surface Transportation Authorization Act; HR 22 (Senate version) and HR 3763. The first hearing will be this evening and will establish the rule for the general consideration of the bill (will probably us HR 22 as the vehicle). The second hearing will be on Tuesday and will determine how the proposed amendments (86 currently listed on the Committee web site) will be addressed on the floor of the House.

Homeland Security Markup

On Wednesday the House Homeland Security Committee will hold a markup hearing for seven separate bills. Of those bills only three may be of specific interest to readers of this blog and none of them have yet been introduced (Committee Drafts are available):

• State and Local Cyber Protection Act of 2015;

• Department of Homeland Security CBRNE Defense Act of 2015; and

• Strengthening Cybersecurity Information Sharing and Coordination in Our Ports Act of 2015;

I’ll have more information on these bills in a later post.

On the Floor

The House will be taking up a number of homeland security related bills under the suspension of rules this week. Of those only one may be of specific interest to readers of this blog; HR 3503, the Department of Homeland Security Support to Fusion Centers Act of 2015. Unfortunately, there will be limited debate and no chance to correct the deficiencies I noted.

The House will also probably consider the STA authorization bill that I mentioned above. It is also scheduled to address the President’s veto of HR 1735, the National Defense Authorization Act of 2016.

BTW: This week really marks the start of the House’s operation under Speaker Ryan. That may get interesting, but probably not this week.