Senate THUD Fails Cloture Test

Yesterday the Senate failed to close debate on S 1243, the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2014. The cloture vote failed by a partisan vote of 54 – 43. At the same time the House leadership pulled HR 2610, the House version of the bill, from consideration on the floor of the House. These two bills are shaping up to be a major focus of the budget conflict between the conservative wing of the Republican Party and the Democrats.

No more action will be taken on either bill until after the Congress returns on September 9^th.

House Begins THUD Consideration

The House began consideration of HR 2610, the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2014, on Tuesday and will finish consideration of the bill today.

To date there has only been one floor amendment approved that will be of specific interest to the chemical safety/transportation community. An amendment (Cong Rec, 7-30-13, Pgs H5117-8) offered by Rep. Griffin (R,AR) increased the operational funding of the Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration by $500,000 (2.3%). That increase was offset by taking money from account for the Office of the Secretary (DOT).

Since the reading of the bill has moved on to the HUD portion of the bill, there probably will not be any further amendments of interest to the chemical safety/transportation community. It is possible that amendments could be made to the spending for NTSB as their funding is found in Title III of the bill, but it is unlikely.

Congressional Hearings – Week of 7-28-13

This is the last week before the long summer recess and Congress is going to try to get a lot of stuff done. With that said there are only four hearings currently on the schedule (and one promised) that may be of specific interest to the chemical safety/security and cybersecurity communities; DOD spending, one CFATS hearing, one chemical safety hearing and maybe a cybersecurity hearing.

CFATS

The Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection, and Security Technologies Subcommittee of the House Homeland Security Committee will be holding a hearing on Thursday on "West Fertilizer, Off the Grid: The Problem of Unidentified Chemical Facilities." No witness list is currently available, but we can be assured that David Wulf, the ISCD Director will be there. The other perennial favorite Rand Beers has been temporarily bumped upstairs so there is no telling who will be representing NPPD.

Chemical Safety

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will be holding a hearing on Wednesday looking at “Strengthening Public Health Protections by Addressing Toxic Chemical Threats.” This could be a chemical security hearing, no witness list to judge by, but I suspect this will be a look at Sen. Boxer’s re-work of the late Sen. Lautenberg’s TSCA bill (S 1009).

DOD Spending

There will be two mark-up hearings this week in the Senate for the FY 2014 DOD spending bill, the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Tuesday and the full Appropriations Committee on Thursday. We might see the bill published before the Senate heads home Friday.

Cybersecurity

The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee is supposedly going to be holding a markup hearing this week on S 1353, Senator Rockefeller’s Cybersecurity Framework me-too bill. We still haven’t seen an official version of the bill in print nor is there anything on the Committee web site about a hearing, but there are news reports that this will be coming this week.

Floor Action

The Senate will resume consideration of the Transportation spending bill (S 1243) today. When it passes the Senate will hold off further action until the House adopts HR 2610 later this week. The Senate will then substitute the S 1243 language for the House language and send the bill to conference. There are big differences on overall spending here so this one could get ugly.

House Rules Committee Provides Open Rule for HR 2610

The same rule from the House Rules Committee that governs the floor debate for HR 2397 also addresses the debate for HR 2610, the Departments of Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill, 2014. In this case, however, the Committee adopted an open rule like those that the Republican leadership has been using since regaining control of the House.

The rule provides that any time after HR 2397 has been considered the House may begin consideration of HR 2610. There will be an hour of general debate on the bill and then the reading of the bill will begin. At any point during that reading, amendments may be offered from the floor on the areas currently being read. When there are conflicts for recognition, the Chair may give priority to amendments that have been published in the Congressional Record (none had been offered as of yesterday).

At this point there is no telling when this bill will come to the floor. Consideration may start this week and carry over until next week, or it could be held until next week. And we are still waiting to see when HR 2410, the Ag spending bill, will be brought to the floor.

Senate Begins Consideration of S 1243 – FY 2014 DOT Spending bill

On Thursday the Senate officially began the consideration of S 1243, the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2014. No action was taken beyond the Clerk’s reading of the title of the bill in and the first cloture motion being submitted. Actual action will begin next week with the vote on the cloture motion to close debate on proceeding to consider the bill on Tuesday.

No amendments to S 1243 were filed on Thursday or Friday (only a pro forma session Friday so nothing could be filed then in any case. I expect that we will start to see the amendment process crank up on Tuesday.

BTW: The House is not currently scheduled to take up HR 2610, the House version of the bill, according to the Majority Leader’s web site, but that may change as the Rules Committee is scheduled to take up the bill on  Monday evening. More on that in my weekly congressional hearing post.

HR 2610 Introduced – FY 2014 DOT

As I noted earlier Rep. Latham (R,IA) introduced HR 2610, the Departments of Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill, 2014. I normally follow this bill for chemical transportation issues, but this year it also includes a couple of minor cybersecurity references. As is typical there is little of specific interest in the actual language of the bill beyond the funding levels of the specific agencies. We have to look at the Committee Report to see the details that might be of real interest.

Cybersecurity

The Appropriations Committee has been generally supportive of department internal cybersecurity requests so far, but that is not true with this bill. They reduced the DOT internal network cybersecurity spending from $10 million to $2 million, noting [Report, pg 10] that:

“The Committee recommendation includes $2,000,000 to support the Secretary’s Cyber Security Initiative, which is $4,000,000 below the budget request and $8,000,000 less than the fiscal year 2013 enacted level. Because of the fiscal year 2013 continuing resolution, this account received $10,000,000, a $4,000,000 increase over that year’s budget request. With the funding provided in fiscal year 2014, the Department will receive a total of $12,000,000 over two years, equal to the requests of the two fiscal years.”

I sure hope that the DOT CIO is spending this year’s money wisely. If this stands through the legislative process, next year will be tight in DOT cybersecurity programs.

The only other cybersecurity mention comes in the Committee Report in the section concerning the FAA. Under the heading “Cyber Security and Protecting the National Airspace System” [pg 24] the Committee notes that:

“As FAA continues to make billion dollar investments in NextGen, the Agency must ensure that new systems are more secure than the legacy systems they replace or supplement, and new threats are not inadvertently introduced. A clear understanding of threats, vulnerabilities, and countermeasures is absolutely essential.”

No new money for the effort but the Committee does recommend that “FAA needs to take full advantage of ongoing DOD cyber work, which could provide invaluable insights on how to protect air traffic control systems.”

Interdepartmental Conflicts

The Appropriations Committee has an interesting oversight responsibility because of its control of the purse strings over the entire federal government. It gets a chance to see and influence/control competition between different departments of the Executive Branch to make sure that there isn’t too much duplication of work. There are two such cases addressed in this report; one dealing with security and one with safety.

In the report’s discussion of the Federal Transit Authority (FTA) spending it notes that the Committee has included language in the bill “prohibiting FTA from creating a permanent office of transit security” [Report pg 52]. It goes on to explain that the lead agency for transportation security is DHS in all modes “including rail and transit lines”.

In the safety case the issue is not so clear cut. In the PHMSA section of the Report [pg 65] they note that:

“The Committee is advised that the approval processes for Self Contained Breathing Apparatus (SCBA) respirator cylinders by both PHMSA and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health may be duplicative and potentially restrictive of competitive options.”

Since the division of labor here is not so clear, so the Committee resorts to the old congressional favorite; a report. PHMSA is given one year to report to the Committee “on whether these approval processes can be made more efficient”.

Special Permit Fees

The Obama Administration has each year attempted to raise funds for DOT by including a new fee for the processing and enforcing of PHMSA special permits and approvals in their budget proposal. Each year the Appropriations Committee has refused to include it in the spending bill. This year is no different, if somewhat less strident in their rejection. They do note [Report pg 64] that:

“Additional fees within this account should be considered in the context of authorizing legislation originating in the committees of jurisdiction.”

Moving Forward

This bill is likely to come to the floor in the next two weeks under an open rule. Various amendments will be proposed with many being adopted. It will then be ignored by the Senate who will probably adopt a modified version of S 1243 and then substitute its language for HR 2610 as adopted by the House. As I noted in my post on that bill the Senate Appropriations Committee also addressed the FAA cybersecurity issue as well as the PHMSA fee issue.

This bill may make it to the President’s desk before October 1^st, but that isn’t real likely in the current legislative atmosphere. It is still too early to tell if we will get an omnibus spending bill at the last minute or if there will be a continuing resolution. Early money would probably go for the CR.

Bills Introduced – 7-8-13

Congress is back in town but it turns out that there were actually two bills introduced during the 4^th of July Recess (July 2^nd to be exact), both spending bills. Only one of those might be of specific interest to the chemical transportation community:

HR 2610 Latest Title: Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2014 Sponsor: Rep Latham, Tom (R,IA)

I’ll take a closer look at this and provide specific details in a later post.