Committee Hearings – Week of 09-08-19

This week both the House and Senate will be back in Washington after their long summer recess. Spending bills will be the big news this week, but congressional committees will be tackling some other issues as well. Of concern here will be a Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) hearing, DOE security, homeland security threats, and TSA oversight.

Appropriations

With spending bills (or continuing resolution) due by the end of the month, the Senate Appropriations Committee will start marking up spending bills this week (they were waiting on the budget deal to be completed before they started their work). The following hearings are scheduled:

• Defense Subcommittee – 9-10-19;

• Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Subcommittee – 9-10-19;

• State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Subcommittee – 09-11-19; and

• Full Committee – 09-12-19

It looks like the Full Committee bill will be minibus combining the bills from the three committees listed above. This would be the equivalent of the first minibus (HR 2740) that was passed in the House back in June. We are likely to see this bill next week on the floor of the Senate. Even if it is passed then, it will likely have to go to conference with the House before it can be sent to the President. That is unlikely (possible though depending on how partisan the bill is) to happen before the end of the month.

Homeland Security Threats

On Tuesday the House Homeland Security Committee will hold a hearing on "Global Terrorism: Threats to the Homeland, Part I". No witness list is available. I doubt that there will be much (if any) focus on cybersecurity or specific threats against chemical facilities, but we will have to wait and see.

CFATS Hearing

On Wednesday the House Energy and Commerce Committee will hold a hearing on "Protecting and Securing Chemical Facilities from Terrorist Attacks". The witness list includes:

• David Wulf, DHS;
• Matthew Fridley, Brenntag North America, Inc;

• Michele Roberts, Environmental Justice Health Alliance (EJHA);

• John Paul Smith, United Steelworkers (USW); and

• Scott Welchel, Dow Chemical Company

NOTE: Wulf is listed as the “Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Infrastructure Protection” not the Director of the DHS Infrastructure Security Compliance Division (ISCD). This is a recurring problem for Wulf, every there is a vacancy up the chain of command at DHS Wulf moves up to the IP position.

The ‘missing’ witness here is a representative from the GAO. We typically see the GAO representative on these CFATS hearings. The other, oddly refreshingly, thing about the witness list is that it presents a balanced list of witnesses, two activist organizations and two industry organizations. Typically, a committee controlled by Democrats has three activist and one industry representative on the witness panel (and to be fair, Republican controlled committees generally reverse the ratio).

This is being billed as a ‘legislative hearing’ focusing on HR 3256, Protecting and Securing Chemical Facilities from Terrorist Attacks Act of 2019. In other words, the Committee would expect to hear the witness opinions about the provisions of the bill. Interestingly, the copy of the bill is the copy of the bill as introduced, not the amended version that was passed in the Homeland Security Committee. The summary provided in the Staff Briefing Memo, however, refers to the amended version of the bill.

DOE Security

On Wednesday the Senate Energy Subcommittee of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee will hold a legislative hearing looking at nine pending bills. The witness list includes:

• Mark Menezes, DOE; and

• Anton Porter, FERC

One of the nine bills one has been covered here: S 2095, Enhancing Grid Security Through Public-Private Partnerships Act.

TSA Oversight

On Wednesday the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee will hold a hearing on “Protecting the Nation’s Transportation Systems: Oversight of the Transportation Security Administration”. The current witness list has only one witness, Patricia Cogswell, Acting Deputy Administrator, TSA,

As with most TSA related hearings, I suspect that this vast majority of the discussion at this hearing will be targeted at passenger air security, not surface security issues.

Congressional Hearings – Week of 6-18-12

This week the House is back in Washington, but even with both houses of Congress in town we have to stretch some to find hearings that might be of interest to the chemical security and cybersecurity readers of this blog. There is another appropriations hearing and a look at the security clearance process.

Spending Bill

The House Appropriations Committee will be holding their final markup of the Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development Appropriations Bill on Tuesday. There will be nothing here directly mentioning security, either cyber or chemical, but there could chemical safety issues addressed that could have a potential to affect facility security matters; or maybe not. The Appropriations Committee gets proactive about the oddest things.

Security Clearances

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs will be holding a hearing on Thursday on security clearance reform. While there is no current provision in law or regulation requiring critical infrastructure organizations (outside of the defense industry sector) to have personnel hold security clearances, that is likely to change as it becomes for obvious that many such industries will potentially be subject to serious cyber-attack. Providing those entities access to classified intelligence information, necessary for their internal security programs, will require large numbers of security clearances to be issued. No witness list is available yet.

HR 3671 Introduced – Consolidated Appropriations FY 2012

Yesterday Rep. Rogers (R,KY), the Chair of the House Appropriations Committee, introduced HR 3671, the Consolidated Appropriations Act 2012. This bill is the spending bill for the remainder of the federal government for this fiscal year. The GPO does not yet have a copy of the bill available, but a Committee press release contains links to the drafts of the various ‘Divisions’ of the bill.

Division A (DOD) and Division D (DHS) are the two primary parts of the bill that will be of potential interest to the cyber security and chemical security communities. Needless to say I have not yet had time to peruse either of these sections in detail. I can tell you however that §540 of Title D does provide the standard extension of the CFATS program through October 4, 2012.

More info to follow.

HR 1105 Update – 02-27-09

Just a quick follow-up report on yesterday’s blog about HR 1105, the Omnibus Appropriations Act, 2009. I noted that there were supposed to be additional funds for DHS in the new spending bill for the portions of the government that were funded by a continuing resolution last fall (DHS was specifically funded for FY2009 in the Consolidated Security, Disaster Assistance, and Continuing Appropriations Act, 2009). Last night I had a chance to review the 1123 page document and can confirm that DHS did get additional money, but there was nothing in the bill that related to chemical security issues. There is lots of pork and some surprising policy provisions, but nothing to do with the subject of this blog. I will keep an eye on this as it runs through the Senate and the inevitable conference to see if anything is added that will affect chemical security issues.