Review - CFATS and the 118th Congress

There has been a lot of discussion in the press about the legislative agenda facing a narrowly divided 118^th Congress. The normal slew of spending bills and authorization bills are going to be hard enough for a Republican (mostly) House to craft in a manner that will pass a Democratic (mostly) Senate, then there are the more controversial bills like the federal borrowing limit that will really test the Congress. But a small federal program, well familiar to readers of this blog, the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) program, is set to expire this summer, unless it is reauthorized. This program faces the added challenge in that three committees oversee the fate of the program and take at least three (sometimes four or five) different outlooks on where the program should head in the next authorization period.

Short-Term Extension

It is unlikely that an extension bill will be crafted and wend its way through the legislative process before July 27^th, 2023 (see Statutory Notes to 6 USC 621). We are likely to see a short-term extension of the CFATS program as part of some other passable bill. I would not be surprised to see such extension set to September 30^th, 2023. At which point further extensions would be included in the DHS spending bill until some sort of deal is actually worked out.

 

For a more detailed discussion about the reauthorization of the CFATS program, including a look at what might be included in such a bill, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/cfats-and-the-118th-congress - subscription required.

Homeland Security Committee Publishes CFATS Substitute Language

Today the Homeland Security Committee added a note to their web page for their Wednesday markup hearing (that I discussed this weekend) reporting that Rep. Meehan (R,PA) will be offering another set of substitute language for HR 4007. Since there is not an official version of the bill as marked up by Meehan’s Subcommittee it is difficult to sort out the ‘small’ changes in the language. The big changes are easy to see.

Personnel Surety

This bill continues to try to deal with industry complaints about the personnel surety program under development by DHS. The wording gets more confusing and it seems the only intent of the new wording is to eliminate the personnel surety program. The legislation spends much more time explaining what DHS cannot do than it does defining what should be accomplished by the program.

The one positive new addition in this portion of the bill is a requirement for DHS to “to expedite the development of a common credential that screens against the terrorist screening database on a recurrent basis and meets all other screening requirements of this title” §2101(d)(3)(C)(i). Unfortunately this is a far cry from a legislative mandate for a CFATS equivalent of the MTSA TWIC. Only a clear legislative mandate will make this a program that will be accepted by the entire chemical industry.

One of the objections that the Democrats have always had with all of the personnel surety programs discussed to date for CFATS is the lack of a redress process for personnel that believe they have been incorrectly identified as having terrorist ties. New language has been added to this bill to address that concern, kind of. The new language requires the Secretary to establish a personnel surety program that provides redress to an individual “who believes that the personally identifiable information submitted to the Department for such vetting by a covered chemical facility, or its designated representative, was inaccurate” §2101(d)(3)(A)(iii). This completely ignores that possibility of being incorrectly identified as having terrorist ties due to an error on the part of the Government.

Rail Facility Exemption

DHS has long maintained that the responsibility for regulating the chemical security of rail facilities lies with TSA. This was specifically addressed in the pre-amble to the CFATS interim final rule in the Federal Register (72 FR 17688-17745) (see page 17699 for that discussion). Apparently, someone has had some concerns with the final sentence in that discussion:

“DHS may in the future, however, re-evaluate the coverage of railroads, and would issue a rulemaking to consider the matter.”

In any case §2104(c)(1), Rail Transit, makes it explicitly clear that any rail facilities regulated under 49 CFR 1580 will not be affected by the new CFATS regulation. Those facilities would certainly include designated ‘rail secure areas’ for all railroad hazmat shippers handling rail sensitive materials {§1580.107(a)(2)} and for all railroad receivers in high threat urban areas receiving rail sensitive materials {§1580.107(a)(2)}.  

Then §2104(c)(2) goes one step further and exempts all railroad facilities as defined in 1580.3 as being exempt from requirements to submit a Top Screen. That definition states:

“Rail facility means a location at which rail cargo or infrastructure assets are stored, cargo is transferred between conveyances and/or modes of transportation, where transportation command and control operations are performed, or maintenance operations are performed. The term also includes, but is not limited to, passenger stations and terminals, rail yards, crew management centers, dispatching centers, transportation terminals and stations, fueling centers, and telecommunication centers.”

This would specifically exempt most crude oil train loading facilities from CFATS regulations. This is even though the security at those facilities is not regulated by TSA since crude oil is not a rail sensitive material as defined in §1580.100(b).

Other Exemptions Removed

All language exempting other facilities from the CFATS coverage has been removed from this bill. This means that the following facilities would be required to submit a Top Screen to DHS if they had one or more of the 300+ DHS chemicals of interest (COI) listed in Appendix A to 6 CFR Part 27 at or above the screening threshold quantity set for that chemical in that Appendix:

• MTSA covered facilities;

• Public water systems;

• Treatment works;

• DOD owned facilities; and

• NRC regulated facilities

The language maintaining the current CFATS statutory exemption for these facilities had been found in the definition of ‘Covered Facility’ in what is now §2101(f)(1). There is no trace of that language there, or anywhere else in the bill. This is certainly a sweeping addition of responsibility for the folks at the DHS Infrastructure Security Compliance Division (ISCD). It is particularly surprising given the new exemption for rail facilities that are not covered by any security scheme.

Still Missing

This bill is still missing any language that would allow it to be considered successfully in the Senate. There is no mention of employee participation or inherently safer technology. Without even the most stripped down language addressing these areas there is no way that this bill, no matter how quickly it is passed in the House, would ever begin to see debate in the Senate, much less pass a cloture vote.

Democrats will certainly offer such language in Wednesday’s hearing. It will be interesting to see if they can craft language that will be acceptable to the Republican majority on the panel. If they cannot, then this bill will be effectively dead.

House Subcommittee Amends and Adopts HR 4007

Yesterday the Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection, and Security Technologies Subcommittee of the House Homeland Security Committee held a markup hearing for HR 4007, the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards Program Authorization and Accountability Act of 2014. The Subcommittee adopted a number of amendments and then recommended amended the bill to the Full Committee by a voice vote.

The Amendments

In addition to the amendment in the form of a substitute that I covered in an earlier blog post, the amendments that were adopted included provisions to:

Include the newly authorized CFATS program as a provision in the Homeland Security Act of 2002 (agreed to by voice vote);

Provide requirements for non-governmental CFATS inspectors (agreed to by roll call vote);

Remove the proposed program termination language (agreed to by voice vote);

Add specific fiscal years covered by the authorizations in the newly renumbered §8 (agreed to by a voice vote);

NOTE: The last two provisions were included in a single amendment.

The amendments that were rejected by the Subcommittee included provisions:

Allowing CFATS inspections to be conducted by “another government entity” (rejected by voice vote);

Expanding the requirements of the CFATS program to include (rejected by voice vote):

- Assign covered facilities to risk-based tiers,

- Require covered facilities to submit vulnerability assessments and to develop and implement site security plans,

- Approve or disapprove the security vulnerability assessments and site security plans submitted by such facilities,

- Audit and inspect covered facilities, and

- Enforce compliance with the requirements of this Act;

Removing the exceptions for MTSA covered facilities, water and waste water treatment facilities, DOD owned/operated facilities, and NRC regulated facilities (rejected by voice vote);

Inserting a new section dealing with Personnel Surety Program (rejected by roll call vote);

Requiring the Secretary (in conjunction with the facility) to conduct an  assessment of inherently safer technologies (rejected by voice vote);

Requiring facilities to include worker participation in the conduct of security vulnerability assessments and site security plan development (rejected by roll call vote);

Providing whistleblower protections;

Important Changes

Two of the three adopted amendments are politically important and those were both introduced by Rep. Clarke (D,NY), the ranking member. The first was the one that makes the provisions of sections 2 thru 9 a new section of the bill the Homeland Security Act of 2002. This makes the requirements for the CFATS program part of the U.S. Code, providing a whole new level of political certainty to the program.

Combine that with the removal of the automatic termination provisions that were an integral part of the original bill (and only slightly extended in the substitute language) and CFATS would become a program of the Federal government that would have to be actually removed by a formal act of Congress, not just a program that could be allowed to lapse. This gives industry their long asked for certainty in the program.

Rejected IST Provision

 As I have noted in a number of posts about a permanent CFATS program, the only way that a permanent CFATS program bill will pass in the current political environment is for it to include some sort of IST provision. The provision that was included this week was simply a requirement to conduct an IST assessment; it provided no requirement for any facility to actually implement any IST changes at the facility.

The thing that caused this provision to be rejected by the Republican majority of the Subcommittee (beyond just the general reluctance of industry to have any IST language in the bill) was the requirement for the Secretary to conduct the assessment under the guise of helping the facility. Beyond the fact that DHS does not have any in-house expertise to conduct such an assessment, there was a simple knee-jerk rejection of any direct assessment of the efficacy of company operations by a government agency.

There will almost certainly be another IST provision when the full committee marks up the bill. If Democrats really want one to pass, they are going to have to craft one that the Republicans and business can accept. And the Republican are going to have to remember that if they want this bill to pass in the Senate (or even just be considered in the Senate) there will have to be some sort of IST language included in the bill.

Employee Participation

Another must have for this bill to be considered by the Senate is a provision requiring facilities to include first line employees in the security processes. Unfortunately, the amendment offered by Rep. Horsford (D,NV) included language requiring ‘bargaining unit’ participation. This was sure to inspire another knee-jerk Republican no-vote. If the amendment had stopped after “at least one non-supervisory employee of the covered chemical facility” there may have been enough Republican votes to allow passage.

Removing CFATS Exemptions

There have been a number of people in both parties over the years that have had problems with the lack of chemical security coverage at water treatment and waste water treatment facilities. The EPA security program for those facilities is rightly focused on the protection of drinking water safety and the safety of water being discharged to the environment. The protection of the water treatment chemicals from release into the atmosphere by a terrorist act is not even on the EPA security agenda. When many of these facilities use chlorine gas there is more than a little concern about the security of that material that is not currently being addressed by regulators.

The amendment this week went way beyond removing the water treatment facility exemption. It removed all of the exemptions including the exemptions for:

• MTSA facilities (security being addressed by the Coast Guard);

• DOD facilities (being addressed by DOD); and

• Nuclear facilities (being addressed by NRC).

While the chemical security programs at these other facilities is at least somewhat lacking in technical expertise in specifically chemical security matters, all of these programs have strong physical security coverage with inspections being conducted by the regulating agency. Lumping these programs in with the weaker EPA security program doomed this amendment to failure.

Just removing the exemption without considering the special place that water treatment facilities have in protecting the populous and the environment from biological threats (particularly the much more common unintentional threats) also made this amendment difficult to endorse. No local politician will gladly allow DHS the authority to shut down a local water treatment facility because of perceived regulatory non-compliance that does not directly affect water quality issues.

The Full Committee could take this issue up again during markup it the proposed amendment were more tightly focused on the water treatment facility exemption and addressed the local control issue.

Moving Forward

It will be interesting to see how soon the full committee holds a markup on this bill. There have been a number of media reports (here for instance) that the House Energy and Commerce Committee Staff helped to write the bill. If that is so, and there is no E&C CFATS bill that has been introduced this session, then this bill may be able to make it to the floor of the House late this month or early May. If that is the case, and some sort of IST and worker participation amendments are adopted, then this bill may be able to make its way to the Senate floor before the summer break.

It the bill is not passed by the Senate before August, it will probably not get passed.

Homeland Security Committee Announces HR 4007 Markup Hearing

The House Homeland Security Committee announced this morning that their Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection and Security Technologies Subcommittee will be holding a markup hearing Thursday for HR 4007, the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards Program Authorization and Accountability Act of 2014.

No details are available yet, but Rep. Meehan (R,PA) will be offering an amendment in the form of a substitute. Any additional amendments will be made to that language.

It will be interesting to see if the staff has worked out a compromise on the two issues that have kept the Republicans and Democrats on the opposite sides of the fence on the CFATS issue. I expect that we will see some sort of IST amendment and a worker participation amendment offered by Rep. Clarke (D,NY). If either of those amendments gets Republican support then there is a chance that this bill could actually get considered in the Senate. Passage in the House is not a big issue.

I refer readers back to my proposed IST compromise language.

Bills Introduced – 02-06-14

There were 34 bills introduced in the House and Senate yesterday and two of those will be of specific  interest to readers of this blog. Those bills deal with CFATS authorization and the FY 2015 Coast Guard authorization.

HR 4005 Latest Title: To authorize appropriations for the Coast Guard for fiscal years 2015 and 2016, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Rep Hunter, Duncan D. (R,CA)

HR 4007 Latest Title: To recodify and reauthorize the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards Program. Sponsor: Rep Meehan, Patrick (R,PA)

The second bill is the one that I have been hearing about for over a month now. Rep. McCaul is not the author as I had been told, but he is one of the co-sponsors. There are two disappointing aspects of the bill based on the limited data available at Thomas.LOC.gov. First there is not a single Democrat cosponsoring the bill [NOTE: It has been brought to my attention that Rep Green (D,TX) is a co-sponsor, but he is not a ranking member of any committee or subcommittee with oversight of the CFATS program so the intent of the comment is correct; 2-8-14 12:30 am CST]. This obviously not a problem in the House, but bodes ill for the possibility of the bill being considered in the Senate. Second, there are no cosponsors of the bill from the Energy and Commerce Committee, which indicates that there might be a problem getting this bill to the floor of the House. Now we just have to wait for the bill to be published by the GPO to see if there is something in the language of the bill that would allow it to overcome those two obstacles.

2014 and CFATS

2013 is now behind us, so this is a good time to take a look at what the future holds for the CFATS program.

Program Authorization

First, and probably most important the program will receive another extension of its temporary authorization in the next two weeks when the Congress passes another FY 2013 spending bill. If that bill covers the entire year (most likely) then the CFATS program authorization will be extended to October 4^th 2014. This short term authorization will continue to color everything else about the program.

Three separate House committees (Homeland Security, Energy and Commerce, and the Appropriations Committees) will continue to pick at the leadership of the DHS Infrastructure Security Compliance Division (ISCD) about the slow pace of approvals of Site Security Plans. The improvements made in the rate of approvals will continue to be glossed over by the three Committee chairs as they continue to ignore the political and operational constraints placed upon the program by Congress.

The only Committee that has any real chance to have a real effect on the program continues to be the House Appropriations Committee. They control the purse strings and the annual re-authorization process. As long as the appropriations process remains broken, however, we can expect to see a paragraph in each spending bill for DHS include a provision extending the CFATS authorization.

There are no prospects for separate authorization for the CFATS program to be passed in either House this year. There has been no proposals for a permanent authorization made in the House and the proposal made by the late Sen. Lautenberg (S 68) will continue to be ignored by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Personnel Surety Program

It has been almost 8 months since ISCD published their latest proposed version of their personnel surety program. They are closer to a program acceptable to the chemical industry than they were with 2009 proposal, but there are still a large number of industry concerns that need to be dealt with. I will not be surprised if we do not see a 30-day ICR notice on this program this year. If there is, it will almost certainly not include enough changes to make industry close to happy with program and we will not see an approval of the program by the Office of Management and Budget.

This is almost certainly going to need to see Congressional action before this program gets resolved. While this is an election year which slows down Congressional work on controversial topics, I expect that we will see legislation proposed that will extend TWIC coverage to CFATS facilities. Depending on how well crafted the bill is, it could actually get passed before November if it can make it to the floor.

Appendix A Update

The President included in his Chemical Safety and Security Executive Order (EO 13650) a requirement that DHS look at updating the DHS chemicals of interest (COI) list. As I noted in an earlier blog that requirement directed that:

The Secretary of Homeland Security shall identify a list of chemicals, including poisons and reactive substances, that should be considered for addition to the CFATS Chemicals of Interest list.

There have been on-again, off-again discussions with industry about this topic for a number of years now. I doubt that any of those discussions include listing poisons beyond the currently included release toxic COI and chemical warfare agents. The other serious toxins, including the ‘deadly ricin’ are not really weapons of mass concern and are thus inappropriate for inclusion in the Appendix A listing. The only possible exception to this would be methyl bromide and chloropicrin which I have advocated for inclusion for some time, but those were both clearly dealt with in the Appendix A regulation development.

I doubt that we will see any proposed regulatory change associated with this EO requirement.

Ammonium Nitrate Regulations

The regulation implementing the Ammonium Nitrate Security Program mandated by Congress continues to be held up by industry concerns. The biggest political stumbling block here is the concerns of the agricultural industry about the effects these regulations would have upon the use of temporary employees. ISCD will have a hard time trying to come up with a workable program for vetting migrant farm workers who are routinely expected to be picking up fertilizer grade ammonium nitrate from farm co-ops and ag chemical distribution facilities.

The agricultural lobby is still very strong in Washington and DHS has not been able to overcome their opposition to much of anything that deals with chemical security. The only exception was the inclusion of propane as a COI, but even there ISCD had to set an extremely high threshold (60,000 lbs instead of the normal 20,000 lbs for flammable COI) to overcome the objections of this lobby.

The only out I see here is for ISCD to specifically adopt TWIC as a mode of vetting transportation workers picking up ammonium nitrate for direct delivery to farms. This would be an extension of the TWIC program not really authorized by Congress, but it might get by with a wink and a nod from legislators.

I will be very surprised if we see the publication of the long overdue final rule on this program this year.

Chemical Sector Security Summit

While the CSSS is not technically a CFATS meeting, it is run by the Chemical Sector Coordinating Council, this annual meeting has been an important source of information about the CFATS program since its inception. Last year funding issues delayed the announcement of the meeting dates and that contributed to the decline in the number of industry attendees.

While I keep getting assurances from DHS contacts that the Summit is important to ISCD, it seems as if that may be lip service more than an actual commitment. We still have not seen publication of the slides from the various CFATS related presentations that we have come to expect from the earlier meetings.

I expect that we will again see a very late announcement of this year’s Summit and there will be an even smaller industry turnout for the meeting. In the current spending environment, I expect that that low turnout will be used as justification for killing the Summit.

A possible way out for DHS to save the program would be to include web casts of the presentations about the CFATS program. This would greatly increase the number of possible participants and show that there is significant support within the regulated community for continuing the Summit.

Cybersecurity

The CFATS program was almost certainly one of the regulatory programs that the President had in mind when he included §10(a) requirement in the Cybersecurity Executive Order (EO 13636) for including the Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) in current regulatory requirements for critical infrastructure organizations.

Under this EO ISCD has a requirement to report to the President within 90 days of the publication of the CSF (supposed to be published in February) if they have adequate authority to include the CSF in their regulatory scheme. Broadly speaking DHS does have the authority to include the guidance from the CSF in the CFATS program. It would probably have to go through a rule making process much like that used for the Risk-Based Performance Standards guidance document. That could be a time consuming process that would only be able to be started this year.

Continue to Muddle Along

In short I don’t see any major changes being made to the CFATS program in the coming year. Director Wulf and his dedicated chemical security inspectors will continue to make incremental improvements to the approval process for site security programs. Sometime this year the actual inspection process will begin for those facilities that have an approved site security plan.

Other than that the program will continue to muddle along, handicapped by the ineptitude of Congressional authorization and oversight.

Bills Introduced – 10-5-13

Both the House and Senate were in session in a relatively rare Saturday session yesterday, but not much was achieved. I was surprised to see that 25 bills had been introduced in the House; all were spending related, but none did anything to resolve the current standoff. Twenty-four of them are worth mentioning for their particularly innovative level of political silliness.

HR 3247 thru HR 3258 Latest Title: Making continuing appropriations for all departments and agencies of the Federal Government, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Rep Grayson, Alan  (D,FL)

HR 3259 thru HR 2370 Latest Title: Eliminating the debt ceiling for a period defined, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Rep Grayson, Alan (D,FL)

The CR Bills

For brevity’s sake I’m going to refer to these as the CR bills and the Debt Limit bills. The CR Bills are 12 nearly identical bills offering really ‘clean’ CRs as an option for getting the government re-started. Each is two sections long and provides spending authority based upon 2013 spending levels with sequestration. The only difference between the two bills is that the first is for 30 days and the last is 365 days with the ones in between being for a period 30 days longer than the earlier bill in the series.

These are not nearly written in the ‘proper’ format for a CR and miss a lot of the legislative gobbledy-goop that covers all of the appropriate programs and loopholes. For instance the CFATS authorization extension language is missing.

Various lawyers have made the argument to me that providing funding for the program {which these bills would under the ‘each project or activity for which budget authority was provided‘ language in§2(1)} is sufficient authorization to keep CFATS running, but legitimate arguments could be made that it would not necessarily include all of the limitations on that authority provided in the §550 language. Significant changes would still require regulation changes with the publish and comment requirements, but that might be the only restriction on such changes. Remember though, legitimate arguments are the stuff that civil suits are made of.

The Debt Limit Bills

I don’t spend too much time in this blog talking about the debt limit because it doesn’t usually have any direct impact on chemical safety, security or cybersecurity, so I’ll just touch briefly on this last series of bills introduced yesterday, the debt limit bills. These bills are not yet available from the GPO (or Thomas for that matter) so we can’t be sure that they are a similar set up to those that Rep. Grayson proposed for the CR bills, but titles and the number certainly suggest that they are.

Moving Forward

Grayson is not a member of the Appropriations Committee or the Ways and Means Committee (that considers Debt Limit matters) and is a Democrat so there is no chance that any of these bills will receive any consideration in Committee or make it to the floor of the House. This will be the last mention that these political grandstanding bills will get.

House Accepts Senate Amendment to HR 933

This morning the House accepted the Senate amendments to HR 933 by a largely bipartisan vote of 318 – 109. With almost a week to spare Congress avoided the dreaded ‘government shut-down’ with hardly any political theatrics.

This bill extended the authorization of the CFATS program until October 4, 2013 and reduced the funding for the program by about $20 million, leaving the Sequester to further reduce the ISCD spending on the program.

CFATS Reauthorization Update

There is an interesting blog post over at ChemicalProcessing.com by guest blogger Alexis Rudakewych from SOCMA. She looks at the status of three CFATS authorization bills that are wending their way through the legislative process. She pays particular attention to the procedural issues related to their passage.

SOCMA Deadline

She notes in her closing paragraph the concern of SOCMA that a reauthorization bill should be passed before Congress takes its scheduled fall recess on September 23rd. I’m not sure why SOCMA is setting this artificial deadline of getting reauthorization legislation passed this fiscal year. The House version of the DHS appropriations bill that is waiting Senate action contains a standard one-year extension. One would suppose that similar language would be included in any Senate bill that might finally make it through the inactive Senate Appropriations Committee (okay, ‘inactive’ may be misleading; how about ‘otherwise occupied’?). Such language was formally requested by Sen. Lieberman as I noted in an earlier posting.

In any case, the appropriations process will certainly ensure that the CFATS program continues through FY 2012. There is no reason that passage of a one-year extension in the appropriations bill should have any affect on implementation of any of the CFATS bills currently before Congress. Such an extension would take the pressure off any CFATS bill and that could make it easier to work out a compromise or it may stop work on the process. Its hard to tell at this point.

Now I certainly understand SOCMA’s concern that the CFATS program should be put on a firmer footing than depending on the politically charged appropriations process for authorization. While no one has suggested that the CFATS program should be canceled, money managers at covered facilities are concerned about making large security expenditures for a program that might not survive the depreciation schedule for their capital expenditures.

Political Issues

While Ms Rudakewych addresses the procedural issues involved in passage of a CFATS bill, she does not touch on any of the political issues involved. SOCMA has been a vocal industry critic of proposals for including such provisions as IST and public law suits. Such industry opposition was responsible for the failure to pass HR 2868 last session. Failure to address these issues may allow environmental and labor activists to stop passage of HR 901/908 or S 473 this session.

Interestingly it seems that this year the issue that may control final action in the House will have nothing to do with actual security measures. The reason for three separate House bills that essentially do the same thing (different lengths of time for the authorization being the closest thing to a difference in security measures) is that there is an internal House issue about personal political power; which Committee gets the authority to oversea the CFATS program.

SOCMA has been very careful not to pick sides in this debate as has most of the industry. Unfortunately ignoring this issue has done little to solve the problem. It is about time that this power sharing issue is publicly discussed.

In the Senate the political issues actually revolve around the CFATS issues that have been plaguing the chemical security discussion since almost 2001. IST has been probably the largest single sticking point with the two sides taking an all or nothing stance on the issue. Given the Senate rules it doesn’t appear that either side will be able to get enough votes to allow a straight up or down vote on IST.

This session industry appears to have a stronger political position in the debate, but it still looks like the environmental and labor advocates for IST have enough votes to prevent the passage of a cloture motion on the bill. I still think that compromise language is possible and I believe that industry is in a better position to push for compromise. Greenpeace and their friends have spent too much time demonizing the chemical industry to be able to justify compromise to their supporters.

Failure to publicly address these issues is going to insure that we will continue to rely on the DHS authorization process to keep the CFATS program working.