House Passes Four Homeland Security Bills

As I noted this morning the House addressed a number of bills today under suspension of the rules. Four of them were mentioned as being of probably interest to readers of this blog:

• HR 2952 - The Critical Infrastructure Research and Development Act;

• HR 3107 - The Homeland Security Cybersecurity Boots-on-the-Ground Act;

• HR 3202 - The Essential Transportation Worker Identification Credential Assessment Act; and

• HR 3696 - The National Cybersecurity and Critical Infrastructure Protection Act.

All four bills, as expected, passed with impressive bipartisan support. Two of the bills (HR 2952 and HR 3696) passed by voice votes. The other two bills passed in voice votes; HR 3107 (395 to 8) and HR 3202 (400 to 0). Interestingly, HR 3107 was incorporated into HR 3696 before the bill was reported by the Homeland Security Committee.

I suspect the four bills could also garner similar bipartisan support in the Senate. There is a possible problem for HR 3696. This bill is as close at things will get in the near future to being a comprehensive cybersecurity bill. ‘Comprehensive bills’ have been routinely held up by Sen. Reid (D,NV) as the various affected committees in the Senate tried to craft their own bills. I suspect that Reid will do the same for this bill as the leadership tries to craft a deal to pass S 2588, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2014. It is not really a competing bill, but Reid seems to figure that he can only pass one significant cybersecurity bill each session.

Congressional Hearings – Week of 7-27-14

This is the start of the last week currently scheduled for the House and Senate to be in Washington until after the Labor Day Weekend. There is only one hearing currently scheduled that is of specific interest to readers of this blog; a Senate markup hearing that looks at a number of interesting bills including CFATS.

Senate Markup Hearing

On Wednesday the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will hold a business meeting to cover a wide range of nominations and legislation. Included in the list of bills to be addressed are:

• HR 4007, the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards Program Authorization and Accountability Act of 2014;

• S 2547, the RESPONSE Act of 2014; and

• S 2664, a public alert and warning system bill yet to be published.

HR 4007 is, of course, the bill of biggest interest here. The Committee leadership has been talking about writing their own bill since the first of the year, but has failed to reach a consensus on that language. There has been recent talk about Chairman Carper (D,DE) wanting to see language added that would allow Tier 4 facilities to ‘self-certify’ compliance with the site security plan requirements. That amendment would probably be acceptable to the House. Anything more complicated than that might derail passage of this bill.

House Floor

Today the House will consider a number of bills under suspension of rules. Four of them will be of interest to readers of this blog:

• HR 2952 - The Critical Infrastructure Research and Development Act;

• HR 3107 - The Homeland Security Cybersecurity Boots-on-the-Ground Act;

• HR 3202 - The Essential Transportation Worker Identification Credential Assessment Act; and

• HR 3696 - The National Cybersecurity and Critical Infrastructure Protection Act.

The House leadership has determined that these bills have enough bipartisan support to ensure their passage with a 2/3 vote. I’m kind of surprised that HR 3696 made that cut considering the number of organizations that still have problems with privacy issues in the bill. We will see if they get surprised on this vote; it does happen periodically.

Homeland Security Mark-up Hearing Results

Yesterday the House Homeland Security Committee held their markup hearing looking at six different bills including (of potential interest here) HR 1204, HR 1791, HR 2952, and HR 3107. All six bills were ordered to be reported favorably; some with amendments (including HR 1204, HR 2952, and HR 3107).

The Committee provides a nice summary of the amendments, but none of them were significant. The closest to being a meaningful change was the amendment from Rep. Horsford (D,NV) that changed one of the subcommittee names of the new Aviation Security Advisory Committee from the “Perimeter Security Subcommittee” to the “Perimeter Security, Exit Lane Security , and Access Control Subcommittee”.

Actually ‘access control’ was already one of the topics that this subcommittee was to cover, so it only added ‘Exit Lane Security’. This topic is already a big deal in the airport security community so this just gave ‘Exit Lane Security’ a specific home.

Of course, any time a House Committee can do the markup of six bills in a single hearing, we know that there are not going to be any controversial or substantive changes made to any of the bills.

Congressional Hearings – Week of 10-27-13

Both the Senate and the House will be in town this week and the pace of hearings is getting back to normal after the fiscal fiasco has passed. There are four House hearings and one Senate hearing that might be of specific interest to readers of this blog. They include three mark-up hearings, one Coast Guard authorization hearing and one cybersecurity hearing.

Mark-up Hearings

The House Homeland Security Committee will try for a third time on Tuesday to mark-up a group of bills including HR 1204, HR 1791, HR 2952, and HR 3107. I wrote about this hearing in some detail last week on the second attempt to hold this hearing.

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee will hold a mark-up hearing on Tuesday that will address four bills including HR 3300, the FEMA Reauthorization Act of 2013 that I described yesterday. No word yet on any potential amendments.

The Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee will have a Business Meeting today. It will either include a mark-up of some legislation, consider nominations or both; no agenda has been published.

Coast Guard Authorization

The Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Subcommittee of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee will meet on Tuesday to look at a variety of issues that might be included in a Coast Guard authorization bill. The current ‘Summary of Subject Matter’ published by the Committee does not include mention of any security or chemical safety issues.

Cybersecurity

Wednesday will see a potentially interesting take on cybersecurity when the Subcommittee on Emergency Preparedness, Response and Communications and the Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protections and Security Technologies of the House Homeland Security Committee (whew, that’s a lot of words) hold a joint hearing on “Cyber Incident Response: Bridging the Gap Between Cybersecurity and Emergency Management”. No agenda or witness list is currently available.

Congressional Hearings – Week of 10-20-13

The House returns to work tomorrow while the Senate remains in their States for another week of keeping in touch with voters and contributors. The House does not currently have a real heavy hearing schedule this week and only one hearing that might be of specific interest to readers of this blog, a mark-up hearing that was originally scheduled for 10-2-13.

The House Homeland Security Committee will be meeting on Thursday to consider six different bills; four of which may be of specific interest here:

• HR 1204, The Aviation Security Stakeholder Participation Act of 2013;

• HR 1791, The Medical Preparedness Allowable Use Act;

• HR 2952, The Critical Infrastructure Research and Development Advancement Act of 2013; and

• HR 3107, The Homeland Security Cybersecurity Boots-on-the-Ground Act.

Revised language will be introduced for three of these bills:

• HR 1204;

• HR 2952; and

• HR 3107

Among other things the revisions to HR 1204 would tend to re-emphasize that the TSA is to take the recommendations of the Advisory Committee very seriously; reporting to Congress when the TSA does not follow those recommendations. The changes in the language for HR 2952 are essentially non-substantive political changes. The same can be said of the proposed changes to HR 3107.

House Homeland Security Committee Markup Hearing – 10-2-13

The House Homeland Security Committee announced this morning that they would be holding a markup hearing on Wednesday to look at six bills, four of which might be of specific interest to readers of this blog.

Those four bills would be:

HR 1204, The Aviation Security Stakeholder Participation Act of 2013;

HR 1791, The Medical Preparedness Allowable Use Act;

HR 2952, The Critical Infrastructure Research and Development Advancement Act of 2013; and

HR 3107, The Homeland Security Cybersecurity Boots-on-the-Ground Act.

The Committee web site indicates that there will be an amendment in the form of a substitute offered for three of the four bills listed above:

H.R. 1204, Amendment in the Nature of a Substitute [PDF];

H.R. 2952, Amendment in the Nature of a Substitute [PDF]; and

H.R. 3107, Amendment in the Nature of a Substitute [PDF]

I haven’t had a chance to do a detailed review of the substitute language, I’ll probably report on that tomorrow.

HR 2952 Introduced – Critical Infrastructure Protection Technology

As I noted earlier Rep Meehan (R,PA) introduced HR 2952, the Critical Infrastructure Research and Development Advancement (CIRDA) Act of 2013. The bill would modify the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to establish programs within the Science and Technology (S&T) Directorate of the Department of Homeland Security to encourage the development of technologies for the protection of critical infrastructure.

Developing a Strategic Plan

Section 3 of the bill would add §318 to 6 USC Subchapter III (actually the section number would probably end up being §196 because of the silly way that Congress writes laws and then converts them to US Code) that would require the Under Secretary of Science and Technology to develop and transmit to Congress a “a strategic plan to guide the overall direction of Federal physical security and cybersecurity technology research and development efforts for protecting critical infrastructure” {§318(a)}.

That plan would include identifying:

• Critical infrastructure security risks and the associated security technology gaps {§318(b)(1)};

• A set of critical infrastructure security technology needs {§318(b)(2)};

• Laboratories, facilities, modeling, and simulation capabilities that will be required to support the research, development, demonstration, testing, evaluation, and acquisition of the security technologies {§318(b)(3)}; and

• Current and planned programmatic initiatives for fostering the rapid advancement and deployment of security technologies for critical infrastructure protection {§318(b)(4)}.

Public-Private R&D Consortiums

Section 319 would also be added, requiring a separate study by the Under Secretary. This one would address the use of “public-private research and development consortiums for accelerating technology development for critical infrastructure protection” {§319(a)}. The study would focus on privately owned critical infrastructure that would most benefit from the rapid advancement of security technology.

The study would include:

• A summary of the progress and accomplishments of on-going consortiums for critical infrastructure security technologies {§319(b)(1)};

• A prioritized list of technology development focus areas that would most benefit from a public-private research and development consortium {§319(b)(1)}; and

• A proposal for implementing an expanded research and development consortium program, including an assessment of feasibility and an estimate of cost, schedule, and milestones {§319(b)(1)}.

No Funding

As with most pieces of legislation that require the production of studies and reports to Congress, this bill does not provide any funding to DHS S&T to carry out any of this work. In fact, this bill goes the normal bill one better; §4 specifically states that no “additional funds are authorized to be appropriated to carry out this Act and the amendments made by this Act, and this Act and such amendments shall be carried out using amounts otherwise available for such purpose”.

Moving Forward

As with most study bills whether or not this bill moves through the legislative process will depend almost solely on how much pull the author can bring to bear to convince the leadership to move the bill along. It is non-controversial and something that really can’t be argued against since no money is being spent.

In any markup before the House Homeland Security Committee there will be bipartisan support for the bill after language is added to ensure that historically black colleges and universities as well as other minority institutions are included in any proposed research consortiums. I’m not sure why Republican authors of these types of bills don’t just automatically add such language (the Democrats always do) since they will support (or at least acquiesce to) such amendments when offered.

If this bill gets out of Committee it will be one of those bills that (if brought to the floor) will be considered under suspension of the rules and adopted by a bipartisan vote with minimal debate. It would then be passed in the Senate (if it sufficiently attracts the attention of the leadership) by unanimous consent with no debate.

Bills Introduced – 8-1-13

On the next to last day of the session before the summer recess it was a busy day for the introduction of legislation; 70 bills in the Senate and 86 bills in the House. The following may be of specific interest to the chemical security/safety and cybersecurity communities:

S 1429 Latest Title: An original bill making appropriations for the Department of Defense for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2014, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Sen Durbin, Richard (D,IL)

S 1435 Latest Title: A bill to amend title 49, United States Code, to provide certain port authorities, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Sen Gillibrand, Kirsten E. (D,NY)

S 1462 Latest Title: A bill to extend the positive train control system implementation deadline, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Sen Thune, John [SD]

S 1464 Latest Title: A bill to facilitate and enhance the declassification of information that merits declassification, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Sen Shaheen, Jeanne [NH]

HR 2952 Latest Title: To amend the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to make certain improvements in the laws relating to the advancement of security technologies for critical infrastructure protection, and for other purposes.Sponsor: Rep Meehan, Patrick (R,PA)

HR 2958 Latest Title: To amend title 49, United States Code, to provide certain port authorities, and for other purposes.Sponsor: Rep Nadler, Jerrold (D,NY)