Committee Hearings – Week of 4-23-23

With both the House and Senate in Washington this week, we have a relatively normal hearing schedule, with budget issues predominating. There is one cybersecurity hearing of note.

BTW: Fourteen weeks left before the current authorization for the Chemical Security Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) program runs out on July 27^th, 2023. No congressional hearings have been conducted or scheduled.

Cybersecurity

On Thursday, the Subcommittee on Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection of the House Homeland Security Committee will hold a hearing on: “CISA 2025: The State of American Cybersecurity from CISA’s Perspective”. The sole witness will be Jen Easterly, the CISA Director.

An interesting note from the Chair of that subcommittee, Rep Garbarino (R,NY): “However, as over 80 percent of critical infrastructure is privately owned and operated, it is crucial that CISA empowers and strengthens information sharing without becoming a bureaucratic regulatory agency [emphasis added] that undermines its vital relationship with the private sector. This Subcommittee looks forward to speaking with Director Easterly on ways we can increase our cyber resiliency and strengthen our nation’s risk advisor as it faces an increasingly complex cyber threat landscape.”

Commentary: The Homeland Security Committee web site continues to run on press releases rather than web pages. The “Committee Activity” web page does not list any committee hearings, past or future, the ‘Issues’ subpage provides listings of press releases on various topics. Under the ‘Cybersecurity’ topic is a link to the ‘Media Advisory’ about this week’s hearing. Granted, congressional committees are at heart political animals, but they usually play the game and make a show of providing the public with a view of their deliberative process. The Homeland Security Committee has completely given up on that aspect of ‘information sharing’.

On the Floor

The House schedule for this week does not include anything of particular interest here in this blog. Having said that, I have to comment on one of the two bills that will be considered under a rule this week, HR____, the Limit, Save, Grow Act of 2023. This is the ‘debt limit’ bill that was being discussed over the weekend on most of the weekly political talk shows. It is the Republican’s official solution to the pending debt limit crisis. Actually, it is a 320-page political agenda bill that only addresses the debt limit in the last three pages.

Okay, the Republicans legitimately campaigned in 2022 on cutting federal spending, and this bill certainly addresses their issues. Good for them. They added their energy initiatives from HR 1 that was passed in the House last month, but will never be considered in the Senate. Again, this type of topic piling on in legislative ‘must pass’ bills has become a common ploy used by both parties. But the Republicans did promise to stop that practice….

Looking at the House Rules Committee web page for the consideration of this measure, there was no attempt to solicit amendments to this bill when its consideration was announced on Friday. And there are no amendments listed as having been submitted. So, the Republicans are going to bring their premier spending limitation bill to the floor of the House for consideration without allowing amendments to be offered or considered. So much for their vaunted efforts to make the legislative process more open for individual members.

The Republican leadership can talk the talk, but they cannot walk the walk. Granted McCarthy had to do some serious political tight walking and finger-crossed bargaining to get the Speakership. And he is going to have problems holding his very loose coalition together to get this passed. Adding an amendment process to the consideration of this bill would probably make that more difficult. But, if he is going to take the easy way out for reasons of political expediency, is he really changing the political process? Of course not. He and his ‘team’ are just continuing the decline of cooperative House politics that we have been watching over the last two decades.

And the House Republicans wonder why Biden is not willing to negotiate with them.