Bills Introduced – 01-09-14

Of the 33 bills introduced yesterday in the House and Senate only one may be of specific potential interest to readers of this blog.

HR 3825 Latest Title: To establish the National Freight Mobility Infrastructure Improvement Program to improve freight mobility in the United States, to establish the National Freight Mobility Infrastructure Fund, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Rep Smith, Adam (D,WA)

This bill may, or may not, contain specific provisions concerning the shipment of chemicals.

Congressional Hearings – Week of 7-21-13

There are only three House hearings and one Senate hearing that might be of specific interest to the chemical safety/security and cybersecurity communities. They involve a TSA markup, a rule for two spending bills, a transportation bill and a cybersecurity bill. A WMD bill will also be considered on the floor of the House.

Spending Bills

The House Rules Committee will meet this evening to try again to formulate a rule for the consideration of HR 2610 (FY 2014 DOT spending bill) and HR 2397 (FY 2014 DOD spending bill). The big holdup here is the question of whether or not to have an open rule (which the Republican leadership has made the norm for spending bills) for the DOD bill. There is a great deal of concern about an amendment defunding the NSA over the recent cyber-snooping disclosure about that agency.

Apparently there has been a resolution as to handle the DOD bill because the Majority Leader’s web site reports that HR 2397 will be considered this week.

TSA Markup

The Subcommittee on Transportation Security of the House Homeland Security Committee will be holding a markup hearing on Wednesday. One of the bills to be considered will be HR 1204, the Aviation Security Stakeholder Participation Act of 2013.

Transportation

Friday there will be a field hearing in New York City by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s Panel on 21^st Century Freight Transportation looking at “How Freight Transportation Challenges in Urban Areas Impact the Nation”. There is no witness list yet available so it is hard to tell what might be discussed. Always a possibility is the issue of the risk of hazmat trains transiting urban areas.

Cybersecurity

The Senate Commerce Committee will be holding a hearing on Thursday looking at “The Partnership Between NIST and the Private Sector: Improving Cybersecurity”. This should be another feel good hearing about the Cybersecurity Framework being developed by NIST under the President’s Cybersecurity EO (EO 13636). No witness list is yet available, but we can expect to see the NIST Director.

WMD Intelligence

There will also be a House floor vote on HR 1542, the WMD Intelligence and Information Sharing Act of 2013. This bill will be considered under suspension of rules so there will be no floor amendments allowed. There was no committee markup of this bill so there was no chance to add the industrial chemical amendment that I suggested. This bill will pass in a bipartisan vote later today.

Congressional Hearings – Week of 4-21-13

With a terrorist attack and a catastrophic chemical accident still dominating the domestic news Congress returns to Washington to look at more mundane matters including freight transportation and the FY 2014 budget. Two security related hearings will be held looking at cybersecurity and weapons of mass destruction.

Budget Related Hearings

• Federal Railroad Administration Budget, House Appropriations, 4-25-13;

• Oversight of the President's Fiscal Year 2014 Budget Requests for Coast Guard and NOAA, Senate Commerce, 4-23-13; and

• FY 2014 Budget Request for the Department of Homeland Security, Senate Appropriations, 4-23-13

Freight Transportation

On Wednesday the Panel on 21st Century Freight Transportation (not a subcommittee, maybe a temporary subcommittee) will hold a hearing on the Overview of the United States’ Freight Transportation System. According to a Panel document, they will be looking at the ‘system’ from an intermodal perspective. There is no specific mention of hazardous material shipping in that document, nor shipping security, but the topics may come up

The witness list includes:

• Fred Smith, FedEx Corporation

• Charles W. Moorman, Norfolk Southern Corporation

•  James Newsome, South Carolina Ports Authority

• Derek Leathers, Werner Enterprises

• Edward Wytkind, Transportation Trades Department, AFL-CIO

Weapons of Mass Destruction

The Counterterrorism and Intelligence Subcommittee of the House Homeland Security Committee will be holding a hearing on Counterterrorism Efforts to Combat a Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear (CBRN) Attack on the Homeland. This hearing was originally scheduled for April 11^th. The witness list remains the same as I reported earlier.

Cybersecurity

The Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection and Security Technologies Subcommittee of the House Homeland Security Committee will be holding a hearing on Thursday on Striking the Right Balance: Protecting Our Nation's Critical Infrastructure from Cyber Attack and Ensuring Privacy and Civil Liberties. It is odd that this hearing is coming after the House passage of CISPA, but that doesn’t appear to be the end of cybersecurity legislation. No witness list is currently available.

Action on the House Floor

There is only one bill that is currently scheduled to come to the floor of the House this week that even remotely concerns chemical safety matters (much less security of any kind) and that is H.R. 527, the Responsible Helium Administration and Stewardship Act. It will be debated under a Rule on either Thursday or Friday. I haven’t covered this bill and I probably won’t mention it again.