Committee Hearings – Week of 06-05-16

This week the House and Senate return from their long Memorial Day weekend. The summer break is fast approaching and there are lots of important bills that should be completed by the time Congress leaves to avoid the ‘heat of summer’. Surprisingly there are only three hearings of potential interest and only one of those deals with an ‘important bill’.

Cybersecurity Markup

On Wednesday the House Homeland Security Committee will be holding a markup hearing to consider a number of bills, including the following cybersecurity related bills:

• HR 5064, the “Improving Small Business Cyber Security Act of 2016”;

• HR ___, the “Support for Rapid Innovation Act of 2016”;

• HR ___, the “Leveraging Emerging Technologies Act of 2016”; and

• HR ___, the “Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection Agency Act of 2016”.

None of these bills as currently written deal with control system security. The last bill is probably the most important in the long run as it changes the organization of the National Protection and Programs Directorate of DHS to the new more cyber focused ‘Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection Agency’. I’ll go into more detail after the bill is formally introduced.

FY 2017 DHS Spending

On Thursday the Homeland Security Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee will hold a mark-up hearing on their FY 2017 DHS spending bill.

FAST Act

The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee will be holding a hearing on “Implementation of the FAST Act”. This was the transportation bill that was passed last December which included a number of provisions concerning crude oil trains.

On the Floor

The Senate will resume consideration of S 2943, the FY 2017 NDAA. None of the amendments of potential interest to readers of this blog (see here, here, and here) have yet to be considered (and may never be considered given the large number of amendments proposed). We will just have to wait and see.

On Wednesday the House will consider S 2276. According to the House Majority Leader’s web site the House will actually be considering an amendment to the bill under suspension of the rules. That amendment is likely to be the language from HR 4937, the version of the PIPES Act that came out of the House Transportation Committee. There is a slight chance that it could be the language from HR 5050, a version of the House Energy and Commerce Committee that I have not reviewed here in this blog.