House to Consider HR 3586 Today

The House will consider HR 3586, Border and Maritime Coordination Improvement Act, under suspension of the rules today. The bill was reported yesterday. While the actual report is not yet available from the GPO, the revised language is.

The authority for establishment of a Cybersecurity Joint Task Force is still included in the bill, but the location has been changed to the new §435(k)(4) (added in §3). The TWIC provisions for aliens also remain in the bill but they are now found in §12.

Moving Forward

Since the bill will be considered under suspension of the rules, there will be limited debate and no amendments will be offered from the floor. Based upon the voice vote in Committee, I expect that this will pass with substantial bipartisan support today. This will probably be taken up by the Senate under their unanimous consent process, without debate and no vote.

Commentary

I still find it a tad bit odd that a cybersecurity joint task force is being authorized under provisions establishing border security joint task forces. I’m still hoping that the Committee Report will shine some more light on the details of this new organization.

NOTE: I overlooked this bill in my post on Monday because of the title; I seldom cover border issues. I double checked this morning when I noticed that the bill had been reported yesterday and noticed my previous looks at this bill.

NOTE: Laurie Thomas at the Maritime Security Blog, has a nice analysis of the TWIC provisions of this bill. [Added 4-13-16, 13:35 EDT].