Committee Hearings – Week of 06-03-18

This week with both the House and Senate back from their extended Memorial Day Weekend spending bills will be the major topic on the Hill. There will also be two other hearings of potential interest to readers of this blog. The first will be a committee markup of a number of homeland security related bills. The second will be a hearing dealing with drone defense and S 2836.

Spending Bills

In addition to the Rules Committee hearings and floor consideration of HR 5895 that I mentioned in an earlier post, there will be some additional spending bills marked up this week:

• Tuesday – Senate – Subcommittee - Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (THUD), and Related Agencies;

• Tuesday – Senate – Subcommittee - Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies;

• Wednesday – House – Committee - Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies;

• Thursday – House – Subcommittee – DOD;

• Thursday – Senate- Committee – THUD;

Markup Hearing

On Wednesday the House Homeland Security Committee will be holding a markup hearing to look at 10 bills. Of those, three may be of specific interest to readers of this blog:

• HR 5733, the DHS Industrial Control Systems Capabilities Enhancement Act of 2018;

• HR 5729, the Transportation Worker Identification Credential Accountability Act of 2018; and

• HRes 898 Directing the Secretary of Homeland Security to transmit certain documents to the House of Representatives relating to Department of Homeland Security policies and activities relating to homeland security information produced and disseminated regarding cybersecurity threats posed by the ZTE Corporation, headquartered in Shenzhen, China.

The resolution is effectively a subpoena to be issued by Congress. It was introduced by Rep. Thompson (D,MS). It is a straightforward listing of the types of documents that Thompson expects to be provided by DHS without any of the politically loaded ‘Congressional findings’ that frequently accompany such documents. Practically speaking, since Thompson is the Ranking Member of the Committee, he should be influential enough in his own right to have this resolution considered by the Committee, but I suspect that there will be at least some bipartisan support for the resolution.

Drone Defense

On Wednesday the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will hold an informational hearing on S 2836 and Countering Malicious Drones. The witness list includes:

• David J. Glawe, Department of Homeland Security;

• Hayley Chang, Department of Homeland Security;

• Scott Brunner, Federal Bureau of Investigation; and

• Angela H. Stubblefield, Federal Aviation Administration

This hearing will be focused on policy and the legal aspects of counter-drone operations. I suspect that the witnesses will be generally supportive of S 2836, but it will be informative looking at how down into the weeds they get into the legal aspects.

I am glad to see Chairman Johnson holding this type of hearing before moving to a markup of his bill. I think that it would also be helpful if the Committee held a hearing looking at the types of technology currently available to conduct counter-drone operations.