Emergency Rules Committee Hearing for HR 2642

The House Rules Committee is currently meeting in an emergency session to develop a rule for HR 2642, the Federal Agriculture Reform and Risk Management Act of 2013, that was introduced today. This is the bill that will replace HR 1947 that failed in the House last month. This bill appears to have removed the provisions that were most objectionable to the Democrat dealing with the Food Stamp program.

The Committee Draft of the bill currently available on the Rules Committee web site (neither the Library of Congress nor the GPO have been given the bill yet) contains three provisions that may be of interest to the chemical security/safety community.

• Sec. 6126. Special authorization for biosecurity planning and response;

• Sec. 11319. Sense of congress regarding agriculture security programs; and

• Sec. 11324. Applicability of spill prevention, control, and countermeasure rule.

I’ll look at these in more detail in a future post.

Bills Introduced – 05-15-13

We are starting to see the introduction of appropriations and authorizations bills for FY 2014, with one of each being submitted yesterday. The agriculture bill may contain chemical security or safety items in light of the West Fertilizer explosion. As always the DOD spending bill may be expected to include cybersecurity provisions.

S 954 Latest Title: An original bill to reauthorize agricultural programs through 2018. Sponsor: Sen Stabenow, Debbie (D,MI)

HR 1960 Latest Title: To authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2014 for military activities of the Department of Defense and for military construction, to prescribe military personnel strengths for such fiscal year, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Rep McKeon, Howard P. "Buck" (R,CA)

We will just have to wait for the official publication of these bills to see what they actually contain.