Post Start Up Congressional Recess

As I reported earlier, both the House and Senate are taking a break now that they have gotten the government temporarily funded. They both passed S Con Res 24 on Wednesday and a copy of that resolution is now available on the GPO web site.  I was correct in reporting that the House will return to session next week, but the Senate is not scheduled to return until Monday of the following week. Both Houses missed scheduled time in their districts (recesses) before and during the federal funding fiasco.

Snow Days for Congress

Vincent Morris, the spokesman for the House Rules Committee just posted the following on Twitter: “it's official - no votes the rest of the week. Snow storm threat closes down house business. Also rules meeting on intell & anti-trust off “. This is hardly surprising, with a forecast for a foot of snow this evening, on top of almost 3 foot of snow last weekend; all of Washington will probably be taking a couple more days off. No word yet if today’s House session will resume at 2:00 pm as scheduled or if there will be pro-forma sessions the rest of the week. None of the Congressional web sites that I have checked note anything about a snow closure. A Senate Homeland Security Committee Subcommittee hearing today was postponed with a new date and time ‘to be determined’. The chemical security type hearings that I have reported on for this week are still being listed as ‘scheduled’. I expect that the only one that might happen is today’s hearing before the Homeland Security Subcommittee on the DHS budget at 3:00 pm EST. LATE NOTE: The House adjorned after a proforma session at 2:00 pm EST. Next business day will be Monday, February 22nd.

Congressional Hearing Schedule – Week of 06-01-09

Congress will not be ‘back’ from their Memorial Day recess until tomorrow, so it is a tad bit presumptuous to be talking about their hearing schedule for this week. The five committees that I watch fairly closely (House: Homeland Security, Energy and Commerce, and Appropriations; Senate: Homeland Security, and Commerce) all have hearings scheduled on their web sites, though only one deals with anything approaching chemical security issues. The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs is holding their hearing (Tuesday, 6-2-09, 2:30 pm EDT) on the nomination of Rand Beers to be the new Under Secretary for National Protections and Programs. That will of course make him responsible for, among a large number of things, the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards. It will be interesting to see if that is touched on in this hearing; I don’t expect much.