Committee Hearings – Week of 5-15-16

This week both the House and Senate will be in Washington, but there are only a limited number of hearings currently scheduled that may be of specific interest to readers of this blog; an EMP hearing and four spending bill markups in addition to the Rules Committee hearings on the FY 2017 NDAA I mentioned earlier.

EMP Hearing

The Oversight and Management Efficiency Subcommittee of the House Homeland Security Committee will hold a hearing on Tuesday on “Oversight of Federal Efforts to Address Electromagnetic Risks”. The witness list includes:

• Chris P. Currie, Government Accountability Office;

• Brandon Wales, Office of Cyber and Infrastructure Analysis, DHS;

• Joseph McClelland, Office of Energy Infrastructure Security, FERC;

• Judson Freed, Emergency Management & Homeland Security, Minn

The hearing will include a review of the latest GAO study on the federal efforts to counter electromagnetic risks, such as an electromagnetic pulse (EMP), to the nation’s critical infrastructure.

Spending Bill Markups

The House Appropriations Committee will be holding markups this week on three spending bills:

• Markup of FY 2017 Defense Bill;

• Markup of FY 2017 Commerce, Justice, and Science Appropriations Bill; and

• Markup of FY 2017 Transportation, Housing and Urban Development Appropriations Bill

The Defense bill markup will be on Tuesday before the full Committee, the other two are subcommittee markups. The draft copy of the defense bill being marked up does not currently include any specific mention of cybersecurity matters. No drafts are yet available on the other two bills.

The FDA spending bill will be taken up in the Senate Appropriations Committee this week. On Tuesday the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration and Related Agencies Subcommittee will conduct their markup and the full Committee will take up the bill on Thursday.

On the Floor

The House will take up HR 4703, the National Cybersecurity Preparedness Consortium Act of 2016 that I discussed last week. As I mentioned in that post, the bill will be considered tomorrow under suspension of the rules. There will be limited debate and a 2/3 vote will be required for passage. It will almost certainly be passed.

The House will also take up HR 4909 on Thursday. That bill will also pass with at least some measure of bipartisan support, but it is hard to say whether or not it will be completed this week.

The Senate will resume consideration of HR 2577, the FY 2017 THUD spending bill. Unless there is some poison pill amendment added to the bill, the Senate will likely finish consideration of the bill this week.