Bills Introduced – 10-05-15

On Monday with only the Senate actually in session there were twelve bills introduced. Only four of those may be of specific interest to readers of this blog:

S 2129 A bill making appropriations for Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, Energy and Water Development, and Departments of Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development, and related programs for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2016, and for other purposes. Sen. Cochran, Thad [R-MS]

S 2130 A bill making appropriations for Department of Defense, energy and water development, Department of Homeland Security, military construction, Department of Veterans Affairs, and Department of State, foreign operations, and related programs for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2016, and for other purposes. Sen. Cochran, Thad [R-MS]

S 2131 A bill making appropriations for Departments of Commerce and Justice, and Science, and Related Agencies and Department of Homeland Security for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2016, and for other purposes. Sen. Cochran, Thad [R-MS] 

S 2132 A bill making appropriations for financial services and general government, Department of the Interior, environment, and Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and related programs for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2016, and for other purposes. Sen. Cochran, Thad [R-MS]

It looks like the Senate leadership is going to try to pass four spending bills this year instead of the recent norm of passing an omnibus bill. To get from 12 spending bills (what is supposed to be normal) to four they had to combine some bills. Interestingly DHS shows up in the title for both S 2130 and S 2131; unlikely to be in both but we’ll see.

If the Senate passes any of these bills they will then use that language to ‘amend’ one of the spending bills previously passed by the House. This has to be done because according to the Constitution spending bills must originate in the House.

The Congress.gov site does not have any language yet for these bills and there is nothing on the Senate Appropriations Committee web site on them either. The closest that we come is a press release from Chairman Cochran from last week indicating that he intended to try to pass 12 spending bills by December 11^th. That has obviously changed.

NOTE: The Congress.gov web site is getting pretty slow in getting the previous day’s bills posted. It is not the only government web site that is having this problem; OIRA is fully a day late in getting ICR’s posted. This obviously slows down the timeliness of my blog posts on these topics. Sorry, but there isn’t much that I can do.

Committee Hearings – Week of 04-19-15

Both the Senate and House will be in session this week, though the House is only working three days. A lot of hearings on spending matters, but the big news is cybersecurity information sharing.  There is one other cybersecurity hearing and the CSB chair nominee hearing will be held.

Information Sharing

The two competing House bills on cybersecurity information sharing will hit the floor this week; HR 1560 on Wednesday and HR 1731 on Thursday. Before that can happen the Rules Committee will have to meet to set up the rule for the consideration of the two bills; HR 1731 today and HR 1560 tomorrow.

Other Cybersecurity

The House Committee on Small Business will hold a hearing on Wednesday on “Small Business, Big Threat: Protecting Small Businesses from Cyber Attacks”. Looking at the witness list and the meeting notice it certainly looks like this will focus on IT and breach issues instead of control system security, but you never can tell.

Spending

The Homeland Security Subcommittee in both the House and Senate will hold hearings on FEMA spending this week. The Senate on Wednesday and the House on Thursday. Also on Wednesday the THUD subcommittee in the Senate will hold a hearing on the FY 2016 DOT spending.

CSB Chair

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will be holding a nomination hearing on Wednesday for Vanessa Sutherland to be a Member and Chairperson of the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board. Ms. Sutherland is currently the Chief Counsel at PHMSA. Management and leadership questions will probably dominate this hearing given the current problems at CSB.