Review - S 1798 Introduced – Countering WMD Office

Earlier this month, Sen Peters (D,MI) introduced S 1798, Offices of Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction and Health Security Act of 2023. The bill would reauthorize both the Office of Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Office of Health Security (name changed) in DHS. Unlike HR 3224, S 1798 does a major rewrite for the authorizing statutes for both offices. It also removes the automatic termination language (which requires periodic reauthorization) for the CWMD Office. No new funding is authorized in this bill.

Moving Forward

Earlier this month, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee held a business meeting that included a markup of this bill. According to the Committee record of the meeting the bill was ordered favorably reported by a vote of 12 to 2 (Sen Marshall (R,KS) and Sen Paul (R,KY) voted no) after it amended and adopted substitute language. Senate committees do not typically provide copies of substitute language or amendments on their web site, so we will have to wait for the Committee Report to be published to see what changes were made.

The current termination date {6 USC 591(e)}for the authorization for the CWMD is December 31^st, 2023. This means that this bill or the House version (HR 3224) should be passed this summer for the other body to have time to take up the bill. The Senate is unlikely to consider S 1798 under regular order, and Paul’s opposition to the bill means that he will almost certainly object if the bill were considered under the suspension of the Rules process. It is not clear if Paul would similarly oppose the less extensive changes to the CWMD authorization found in the House bill.

Commentary

In researching this bill, I went back and looked at the referenced definition of the term ‘weapons of mass destruction’ in 50 USC 1801. Now this definition dates back to 1978 so it completely misses the most-deadly weapon of mass destruction employed in an attack on US soil, the airliners used on 9/11. Those airliners were not the ‘explosive, incendiary, or poison gas’ devices envisioned in paragraph (1) of that definition, though they certainly released jet fuel into their targets and the resulting fires were the proximate cause of the collapse of the Twin Towers.

The wording of the other three paragraphs of the definition could lead us to a better, more inclusive wording for §1801(p)(1):

(1) Any weapon that is designed, intended, or has the capability to cause death or serious bodily injury to a significant number of persons through the release of chemical, kinetic or electrical energy;

For more details about the provisions of this bill, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/s-1798-introduced - subscription required.