Congressional Hearings – Week of 3-6-16

Only the Senate is in session this week, the House is “working in their districts”. For most of the House members, this means that they are working on their re-election campaigns. The Senate is only holding one hearing this week that may be of interest to readers of this blog. It will be a Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee hearing on the DHS budget on Tuesday. High-level conversation with the Secretary, don’t expect much in the way of details, but I would expect mentions of cybersecurity.

The Senate might get back to S 2012, the energy authorization bill, that has been held up over disagreements on including funding for programs to help the city of Flint, MI recover from its self-inflicted (or State inflicted, depending on how you look at it) drinking water contamination issues. There have been continuing behind the scenes negotiations on how to get passed this procedural impasse. We might see progress this week.

Congressional Hearings Week of 5-23-11

The House is back in town after a long week of checking the pulse back home and the Senate was in session the whole time. We’re now back to both houses working at the same time and that makes for an interesting week of hearings for the chemical security community. We have three hearings that will address cyber security, but I’ll be surprised to hear two minutes on control systems. There are two money bills being looked at, but we’re interested in the DOD bill just because of potential cyber security issues.

Cyber Security

The week starts off with the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee taking an official look at the President’s new cyber security proposal that I talked about briefly last week. I focused on potential control systems issues, but that isn’t what the proposal was really about. The Administration is sending representatives from DHS (Reitinger), DOD (Butler), DOJ (Chipman), and DOC (Schwartz). The Lieberman-Collins team will sort out the details; I just hope they ask at least a couple of questions about control system security.

On Wednesday there will be two additional cyber security hearings on the other side of the Dome. The House Judiciary Committee will be holding an oversight hearing looking for ‘Innovative Solutions to Challenging Problems’. The House Science Committee will be looking at ‘Federal Cybersecurity Research and Development Efforts’. Both hearing will be conducted by two separate sub-committees. The inevitable focus will be on information security, but some one may slip up and ask someone about a control system by accident. No word available yet on the attendees at either hearing.

Money Bills

The House Appropriations Committee is meeting on Tuesday to discuss their ‘Report on the Suballocation of Budget Allocations for Fiscal Year 2012’. Two bills will be discussed, but only the Homeland Security Appropriations Bill counts for this community. How far down they are going to ‘sub-allocate’ the money remains to be seen, but it has to get closer to the program level (CFATS, TSA Ground Security, MTSA, or CERT) than does the part of the draft bill that I’ve already reported on.

HR 1540 will be discussed in front of the House Rules Committee this week to formulate the rule to bring it to a floor vote in the House. I previously mislabeled this bill as an ‘appropriations’ bill; it is just an ‘authorization’ bill. Not much here for Homeland Security or chemical security folks, but there may be mention of the DOD and cyber security matters tacked on somewhere along the line; it makes it to the list.

The Missing Hearing

The big hearing that everyone in our community expected to watch this week was the House Energy and Commerce Committee markup of HR 908. This was originally scheduled the week before last, but got bumped because the markup of a medical funding bill went long (nothing controversial there…). It was postponed until this last week, but the House took the week off to visit home folks. As of noon today there was nothing on the Energy and Commerce web site about a markup hearing for this bill; that doesn’t mean one isn’t going to happen, its just that no one is talking about it yet.

There have been news reports about dissention in the ranks, with Rep. Green (D, TX) not getting to add some of wording that he would like to the bill that he co-sponsored. The Democrats can only pass so hard; they don’t think the current bill will make it through the Senate (nor do I), but too much in the way of IST, water facility coverage, worker involvement, whistleblower protection, or citizen law suits and the bill will not get to the Senate; it will die in the Republican controlled House.

Oh, and don’t forget the power play between the Energy and Commerce Committee and the Homeland Security Committee about who gets oversight authority for CFATS.

There’s a lot of behind the scenes stuff going on with this bill and its counterpart in the Homeland Security Committee (HR 901). It will be interesting to see if any of it makes it to the public side of the process.

DHS Spending Bill

I got an interesting email from an reader yesterday. He asked about the status of the DHS appropriations bill, S 3607. He had noticed that according to the Legislative Status page here on the blog site that the bill had been reported out of committee in the Senate.

S 3607 in Senate

The Senate bill has been on the Senate Legislative Calendar since July 19th. Because of constitutional issues it will stay there until the House passes their bill; the House must initiate all spending bills. Once the House bill is sent to the Senate the language in S 3607 will be substituted for the House language as one of the first amendments considered on the House bill.

Typically we would expect to see a variety of floor amendments offered for the spending bill as it is debated in the Senate. Once it is passed it will go back to the House. If the House agrees to the amended version of the bill, then it goes to the President for signature. Typically the House disagrees with the amendments and the bill goes to Conference where the differences between the two versions will be worked out. The re-amended bill goes back to both the Senate and House for votes.

Since the control of money is an important tool for Congress to control the Executive Branch this can be a complicated and time consuming process. In the normal course of events the Senate could take days to debate an appropriations bill.

House Bill

There has not been any action on appropriations bills in the House since July. Only two Department bills have been introduced, Military/Veterans and Transportation/HUD. The Homeland Security Sub-Committee has passed a draft bill, but it has not been taken up by the full House Appropriations Committee. It won’t be officially introduced until the Committee has passed and ordered the bill to be reported.

As of last night, there are no hearings scheduled in the House Appropriations Committee. The way the House Rules are currently organized, nothing can happen on the Appropriations bill until Chairman Obey calls a Committee Meeting to mark-up the draft bill. There are ten appropriations bills in essentially the same status.

Once reported by the Appropriations Committee the bill would then go to the House Rules Committee for the formation of a rule to regulate the floor debate on the bill. The Resolution coming out of that hearing would provide a list of the allowed amendments that would be debated and voted upon during the floor debate. This process usually takes three days, but it can be greatly abbreviated if the Leadership wants.

The House debate on an appropriations bill would normally take the major part of a day. There would be about a dozen or so amendments that would be debated and voted upon. If the minority party (this year the Republicans) wanted to slow up the debate with procedural issues, the debate could take two or even three days before the final vote on the bill occurred.

December 3rd Deadline

The Federal Government has been without a budget since the start of the Fiscal Year on October 1st. They have been operating under a Continuing Resolution, a stop-gap measure that continues the FY 2010 funding for a short period of time while the Congress works out the budget process. The current Continuing Resolution expires on December 3rd. If nothing is done by that point, the government officially shuts down.

Next week the Congress is scheduled to start their Thanksgiving Recess. This would be expected to start when they adjourn on Friday and typically they wouldn’t come back to work until Tuesday, November 30th. This would leave three days for the process described above to be completed on 12 spending bills. That simply is not going to happen.

Another Continuing Resolution

The Military/Veterans appropriations bill (HR 5822/S 3615) will probably be considered and passed by the Senate and may get through the remainder of the process before the December 3rd deadline. To avoid shutting down the remainder of the government, there will be another house bill that will be converted to the next continuing resolution in the Senate. What will be interesting to see is what date is set for the termination of that resolution.

If the leadership thinks that they will be able to get some of their spending plans approved the continuing resolution will terminate sometime late in December. Given the Christmas holidays a date of the 17th would be a reasonable date though a date of the 30th is possible though it would only add a couple of real legislative days to the process. We would probably see another Omnibus Spending Bill come out of this, though a separate DHS bill could still possible.

If the leadership doesn’t think that they will be able to get the spending they want through the process (think passage in the Senate), then they could always punt the problem to next year’s Demopublican Congress; putting an end date of some time after January 5th. This may be especially true for Speaker Pelosi. She has complained on a number of occasions about the inability of the Senate to confirm the hard work done in the House. She might calculate that dumping the spending bill problem on the Republican controlled House would improve her chances of regaining the Speakership in two years.

BTW: Any continuing resolution would almost certainly contain specific language extending the authority for the CFATS program that also expires with the current continuing resolution. An extension until October of 2011 would be included in any DHS budget bill.

In any case, the 111th Congress is going to continue to be interesting to watch, right to the bloody end.

DHS Budget Hearing 2-24-10

I missed a chance to watch the first two budget hearings ‘live’ on the web yesterday and today because of other commitments. This evening was the first chance that I had to watch either of the two Senate hearings (Homeland Security yesterday and Appropriations today). I flipped a coin and watched the webcast of Sen. Byrd’s (D, WV) Homeland Security Subcommittee questioning Secretary Napolitano. While many of the questions were pointed or demanding, it was generally a friendly exchange. As I expected with the Secretary as the sole witness, there was very little mention of CFATS specifically or chemical security issues in general. While I half expected (hoped) someone would ask about the one year CFATS authorization extension; that question was never asked. The only chemical security related question came in the second round of questions asked by Sen. Byrd. Safety vs Security Byrd mentioned the recent fatal chemical accident at the Dow facility in Belle, WV where first responders (an ambulance crew) were not able to get any information about the accident (chemicals involved, extent of the leak, chemical protection requirements) until they had actually arrived at the scene. He noted that it reminded him of last years hearing when he described another chemical incident in West Virginia and he had asked Secretary Napolitano then what DHS was doing to make operations at high-risk chemical facilities safer. He asked the same question today. This year the Secretary was able to reply that the CFATS implementation was rolling along and would take care of the security issues. It wouldn’t have been a politically sound move for her to tell the SENIOR Senator that DHS is not really a safety organization it is a security organization, that the Senator’s particular question should be addressed to OSHA or EPA. Actually, to be fair to Sen. Byrd, there are some questions asked in the SSP questionnaire that kind of obliquely address the issue of communications with first responders. In a blog from last spring I noted that there were a number of questions dealing with first responder capabilities that could only be addressed by talking with the appropriate emergency response agencies. But, this is all the closer CFATS gets to requiring high-risk chemical facilities to provide information to those response agencies. Of course, Chairman Byrd’s hammer is control of the budget pathway for DHS. This tends to make many things look like security issues; when the only tool you have is a hammer many things begin to look like a nail. Too bad he doesn’t have the EPA Administrator or the Labor Department Secretary to call to task for the situation; but they are covered by other sub-committees.

Hopefully I will get to the Homeland Security hearing webcast tomorrow morning. There is probably a better chance for getting a CFATS question or two there.

Another CFATS Extension in the Budget

There was an article Wednesday at ICIS.com about the fact that the President’s FY 2011 budget includes a provision that would extend the authorization. Last year, during discussions and hearings on HR 2868, many Republicans in the House made numerous arguments against approving that legislation because of a similar provision in the FY 2010 budget proposal. With the reported extension request in this years budget proposal (I still can’t find a copy of the detailed budget publicly posted yet) I decided to ask my contacts in DHS Infrastructure Security Compliance Division why the Department was including the extension in this years budget request. I got the following reply from a Department spokesman:

“The Department supports a permanent authorization and maturation of responsibilities for the CFATS program. Given the complexity of the chemical facility regulation, the Department is committed to fully exploring all issues relating to making the program permanent. The Department is committed to working with Congress and other security partners to pass standalone chemical security legislation that includes permanent authority in FY 2010. Recognizing the time constraints and challenges of passing such comprehensive authorization laws, the President’s FY 2011 budget includes a request for a one-year extension of the statutory authority for CFATS, which will allow the time, if needed, to craft a robust permanent program while avoiding the sunset of the Department’s regulatory authority on October 4, 2010.”

I know that the Department worked closely with the House Homeland Security Committee and the Energy and Commerce Committee on HR 2868 last year. I also understand that they are currently working with the Senate Homeland Security Committee to ensure that they will be able to develop workable regulations for whatever legislation becomes law. CFATS legislation will not be as complex as health care reform or global warming legislation, but it is certainly controversial in its own right with widely disparate views of how the program should be managed. With the currently strained and divided political atmosphere in the Senate and a fall election campaign looming for both houses of Congress, it is very possible that final passage of HR 2868 or some alternative CFATS legislation will not happen before October 4th. With that in mind, it surely appears to be prudent for the President to request an additional year extension of the current authority for CFATS. This will ensure that the participants in the CFATS legislative debate can do their work with out the pressure to substitute a CFATS bill that does not address the shortcomings of the current authority just as a means to ‘pass something’ in time. So the word to Senate staffers is: go forth and create a good bill that deals with the legitimate security concerns of all parties; prepare a bill that DHS can enforce with workable regulations, industry can implement without loosing more jobs and will protect chemical workers and their neighbors from potential terrorist attacks on high-risk chemical facilities.

HR 2892 Status 10-01-09

Today at 10:18 am EDT the House took up the matter of HR 2892 and the issue of the Senate’s version of the bill. The House declined the Senate’s amendments and agreed to a conference committee. They voted to provide the following instructions to the conferees:

1) Recede to subsection (a) of section 567 of the Senate amendment; 2) Insist on subsections (b) and (c) of section 552 of the House bill; 3) Recede to the Senate position on subsections (a) and (d) of section 552 of the House bill; and 4) Not record their approval of the final conference agreement unless the text of such agreement (as such term is used in clause 12(a)(4) of rule XXII of the Rules of the House of Representatives) unless the text of such agreement has been available to the managers in an electronic, searchable, and downloadable for for at least 72 hours prior to the time described in such clause.

None of these instructions have any affect on the chemical security provisions of the bill. The provision for the one year extension of the CFATS program remains unchanged. At 11:46 am EDT the Speaker appointed the following members of the Appropriations Committee to represent the House in the conference committee: Price (NC), Serrano, Rodriguez, Ruppersberger, Mollohan, Lowey, Roybal-Allard, Farr, Rothman (NJ), Obey, Rogers (KY), Carter, Culberson, Kirk, Calvert, and Lewis (CA). No word yet on when we can expect the conference report.

Congress Returns on Tuesday

The summer congressional recess ends next Tuesday afternoon. No doubt there are a large number of controversial items on the agenda when they get back to work, but I’ll try to concentrate on just those of potential interest to the Chemical Security Community. DHS Budget Bill Both the House and the Senate passed slightly different version of the Administration’s DHS budget bill well before the summer recess. All that remains now is for the Conference Committee to get together and iron out the differences between the two versions. The Senate named their members of the Conference when they passed the bill back on July 9th, the House has yet to name their Conferees. There really should be no problem to work out the differences and get the final bill passed and signed. Both houses agreed to the provision extending the CFATS authorization for one year so that will almost certainly be in the final bill. CFATS Extension Bill HR 2868, the House bill that would extend CFATS coverage and make it permanent still needs to be considered by the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the House Judiciary Committee before September 30th (that date could of course be extended). The Energy and Environment Subcommittee has a hearing scheduled on HR 2868 and its companion bill HR 3258 for 9-11. Green Peace and a number of other environmental groups have been making a concerted publicity push in local and regional newspaper throughout the break to get this bill passed. They have been using their standard argument of eliminating dangerous chemicals at specific plants as the basis for those local pushes. While the articles have all been written by local activists, they have pretty much used the same general template. SOCMA and the ACC have both pushed back at each of these pushes by the pro-IST activist with letters to the editors of these papers countering the arguments and pointing out the progress made to date in protecting these local facilities from terrorist attack. Again these letters were signed by local chemical industry executives, but they also used a common template to formulate their replies. Interestingly they all pointed out that the Administration supported a one-year extension of the current CFATS regulation to avoid proceeding too quickly on the IST issue. In my mind it is still an open question if these bills will come to floor votes this year or not. There is a much higher probability of making it to the floor of the House than the Senate since nobody in that body is currently banging the chemical security drum the way that Chairmen Thompson and Waxman are. There is still a possibility that this will pass before the Congress closes up for the year, but it will depend on how large and bloody the fight gets on the health care and global warming issues. Cyber Security Issues There are a number of cyber security bills that might yet get considered in committee. The strongest possibility to date is the Senate bill S 773 that is supported by both Rockefeller (D, WV) and Snow (R,ME). That has faced some criticism for its ‘control of the Internet’ issue, but rumors are going around that there is a new, less threatening version being circulated in the halls of the Senate. There isn’t really much in there about control system issues. Chairman Thompson’s bill in the House (HR 2195) does address control systems issues, but only in the electrical power industry. We’ll probably see hearings on both bills later this year, but not much more. Hearings Next Week Congress is still out of town so it is not unusual that most committees have not yet update their web sites (the House Homeland Security site is still officially in August), but there are two chemically related hearings that have been posted for next week. First, the previously mentioned Energy and Environment Subcommittee hearing on Friday at 10:00 a.m. on HR 3258 and HR 2868 is now post, but without any details about who will be there. The other newly posted hearing will be before the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on Thursday at 10:00 a.m.. It will look at Hazardous Material Safety and the Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration (PHMSA). No details available yet on that hearing either.

S 1298 Status – 06-18-09

Sen. Byrd introduced the FY2010 DHS budget bill, S 1298, yesterday. The Senate Appropriations Committee also has filed their report, S 111-31, on the legislation. Both are available on the GPO web site (accessed via www.Thomas.LOC.gov). I am not going to bother trying to do a line-by-line comparison of the two budgets. It just takes too long with documents of this size and complexity. Besides we still have amendments to be made on the floor, at least, and perhaps yet in committee.

Senate DHS Budget Markup

On Wednesday, June 17th, the Homeland Security Subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee held their markup hearing on the FY 2010 budget bill for DHS. According to a press release from Sen. Byrd (D,WV), the Subcommittee Chair, the version of the bill reported to the Full Committee includes $103 million for the CFATS program which includes a total increase of 168 additional full time employees over the FY 2009 number. The bill did include a one year extension of the CFATS authorization as requested by the Obama Administration.

CFATS Extension in Budget Request

A reader called me today to ask an interesting question. He had heard that the 2010 budget request included an extension of the CFATS authorization. He wanted to know if there was any truth to that rumor. I told him that I hadn’t looked at the actual budget request; readers will recall that I have analyzed the Budget in Brief, but I still hadn’t gotten around to pawing through the actual budget request. So, any way, I told him that I would look into it and get back to him. I got a copy of the 2010 DHS Budget Request from the WhiteHouse.gov web site and started paging through it. It’s a good thing that the high school I went to in San Jose, CA taught speed reading; I found what I was looking for on page 62 of a 62 page, small type (8 pt New Century Schoolbook-Roman type), lots to look at:

“SEC. 538. Section 550 of Pub. L. No. 109-295 is amended in subsection (b) by deleting from the last proviso ‘three years after the date of enactment of this Act’ and inserting in lieu thereof ‘October 4, 2010’.”

Without any fan-fare or notice the White House is proposing to extend the authorization for the CFATS program almost one year. A Fail-Safe Plan? Now, there is no way of actually telling from this document if this is anything more than a stop-gap measure, put in place to protect against the eventuality of the Congress not being able to pass a re-authorization bill. If that were the case, you would like to think that the President (more likely an advisor) would have explained this to the necessary leaders in Congress so that they would continue to try to work out an appropriate re-authorization bill. This could explain why Congressman Dent’s reauthorization bill (HR 2477) was not referred to the Homeland Security Committee. It would not actually be needed as a stop-gap measure, because the fall back plan was in the budget. From the best that I can tell my contacts in working in the CFATS program at DHS did not know about this provision being in the budget. They might have been told not to talk about this, but they have seem kind of concerned about the future of their program and the lack of public action in Congress on the reauthorization process. Some of them were actually relieved to see HR 2477 introduced; it would only have been a stop gap, but it would keep their jobs going. Or the Real Plan? Back at the end of April I wrote about the change in wording about chemical facility security on the WhiteHouse.gov web site. At about that time there were indications that the two Committee staffs were still having problems working out their jurisdictional issues on the reauthorization bill. Those delays may have made it essentially impossible for the House to hold hearings in the two committees, mark-up and resolve the resulting conflicting issues, and get a bill to the floor of the House in time to get the bill to the Senate before the August recess. This would make it unlikely that a re-authorization bill could be passed before the expiration of the current program. I have a feeling that the Obama Administration has made a series of political calculations and decided that it has more important things on its plate than resolving the many issues involved in revising the CFATS program. A great deal of political capital would have to be expended to get a major revision through the Senate and health care, energy policy, cap-and-trade, and the economy are much higher priority. They can almost certainly wait a year for this fight. Industry would prefer to see a two or three year extension, but will certainly accept a straight one-year, no-modification extension. The question becomes will the coalition calling for IST implementation accept that deal? They have been fighting hard for over two years now and have little to show for their efforts. Many of the organizations will see the energy policy and a cap-and-trade bill as an adequate short term trade.

Lieberman Weighs in on CFATS Spending

Last week Sen. Lieberman (I, CT), the Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, sent a letter to the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee outlining his thoughts on the Department of Homeland Security budget. It is a rather lengthy letter, as one would imagine given the breadth of DHS operations. There is one paragraph in that letter that refers to Chemical Site Security and I will reproduce it here in its entirety:

“I am pleased that the Department continues to move ahead with the critical chemical Facility Anti-terrorism Standards or CFATS program. This is a critical and long overdue effort to enhance security at facilities, some in or near densely populated areas, that make or use hazardous chemicals and could prove inviting targets for terrorists. As Congress examines how best to reauthorize this program, it is essential that it receive adequate funding to continue the work of soliciting and reviewing facility security plans and beginning site inspections. Last year, DHS saw a significant funding increase for the CFATS program to $73 million, and we need to maintain and expand those resources in the coming fiscal year.”

This comment is important because Congress keeps programs and funding in separate categories. The legislation for re-authorizing CFATS will be separate from the bill authorizing DHS to spend money on CFATS. Lieberman will have a significant role in the Senate in the re-authorization process, but will have less direct control over the budgeting process. The fact that he is asking for a generic increase in the spending for CFATS may indicate that he thinks that the reauthorization will not greatly expand the program. Finally, there are some people that believe that simply continuing the funding for CFATS will be the easiest way for Congress to deal with the reauthorization issue. The $73M+ is a relatively small amount of money in the overall DHS budget and it would probably draw little attention in the overall debate on that budget. An actual reauthorization bill, with the almost certain inclusion of some sort of IST language, may be too controversial to get through a closely divided Senate.