Congressional Hearings Week of 03-14-11

The upcoming week will be a busy one for Congressional hearings, but it currently looks like there will only be three of potential interest to the chemical security community, including an FY 2011 appropriations hearing, an FY 2012 budget hearing and a cybersecurity meeting. I'll look at the last first.

Cybersecurity

The Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection, and Security Technologies from the House Homeland Security Committee will be holding a hearing “Examining the Cyber Threat to Critical Infrastructure and the American Economy” on Wednesday, March 16th. There is no witness list posted yet so we don’t know if this will concentrate on IT or ICS security issues, but this is a committee that many people expect to specifically address ICS security issues during this session.

Budget Hearings

The Homeland Security Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee is continuing their series of hearings looking at the Administrations FY2012 budget request for components of DHS. On Tuesday they will be looking at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) with Administrator Pistole appearing. The major focus will be air security measures, but freight rail security and truck freight security issues will come up briefly.

The House Rules Committee will look at the next short-term continuing resolution, HJ Res 48, on Monday afternoon. I’ll look at that CR in more detail in a separate blog posting.

House Passes Revised HR 3082

This evening the House passed the Senate revised version of HR 3082 by a roll-call vote of 193-165, a nearly party-line vote. This bill amended the continuing resolution passed this last September, extending the expiration date of the CR until March 4, 2011. This also extends the CFATS authorization to the same date.

The 112th Congress will have just about two months (including a 29-day February) to complete the development of 12 spending bills that will be able to be passed in a Senate more evenly divided between the two parties. If the Republicans push the budget cutting envelope too hard, the bill will not pass the majority Democrat Senate; the Republicans will need a number of Democratic defectors to get their legislative agenda passed. Even then they will face the prospects of an Obama veto which they won’t have the votes to overturn in either house.

January and February look to be a very contentious political time unless moderates in both parties can find a way to work together against the more extreme members representing ‘the base’ of each party. I expect that we’ll see more partisan fireworks and not much bipartisan cooperation. I predict that we’ll see at least one more continuing resolution extension before a budget bill is passed.

Oh yes, remember that every day spent working out the details for the FY 2011 budget will take away from preparing for the FY 2012 budget; on the Hill and I suspect at the White House. I’ll have plenty of political fodder for this blog next year.