Review - HR 1389 Introduced – GRID Act

Earlier this month, Rep Crow (D,CO) introduced HR 1389, the Guaranteeing Resilient Installations for Defense (GRID) Act. The bill would amend 16 USC 824o–1 to specifically allow DOE to “enter into contracts and cooperative agreements to improve the resilience of defense critical electric infrastructure”. No funding is authorized in the bill. This bill is identical to HR 8053 from the last session, no action was taken on that bill.

Moving Forward

As with HR 8053, Crow is not a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee to which this bill was assigned for consideration, though one of his two cosponsors {Rep Peters (D,CA)} is. This may mean that there is sufficient influence for this bill to be considered in Committee. There is nothing in this bill that would engender any organized opposition. If it were considered, I would suspect that it would receive at least some level of bipartisan support.

Commentary

There was no action taken last session on HR 8053. While its late introduction was at least partially responsible for that inaction, the major reason is that the assigned committee just has no real interest in defense facility electrical power reliability. This is one (out of a multitude) of the problems with the committee system in Congress. The committee (House Armed Services Committee) which would have the most interest in solving the problems dealt with in this bill, does not have the jurisdictional oversight to write bills affecting the agency (DOE in this case) that can solve those problems. And the committee which does have jurisdiction is too busy with their own political priorities to have time to deal with this relatively minor bill.

 

For more information on the provisions of this bill, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/hr-1389-introduced - subscription required.