HR 4034 Introduced – WMD

As I noted almost two weeks ago Rep. Pascrell (D,NJ) introduced HR 4034, the WMD Prevention and Preparedness Act of 2014. This bill is nearly identical to the version of HR 2356 reported out of the House Homeland Security Committee in the last session of Congress and very similar to HR 5057 from the 111^th Congress.

As has been usual for these bills, the focus is on biosecurity issues not chemical issues. There are some provisions that mention chemicals and could be interpreted to cover both accidental and deliberate releases, but those provisions still mainly refer to biosecurity not chemical security.

Neither the Senate nor the House has been able to move a bill to the floor even though it has been a high-priority for the respective chairs of those committees. Being introduced this late in the session, there is a very low likelihood that the bill will be considered on the floor of the House.

Bills Introduced – 02-11-14

There were 49 bills introduced in the House and Senate yesterday and only one of those might be of specific interest to readers of this blog:

HR 4034 Latest Title: To enhance homeland security by improving efforts to prevent, protect against, respond to, and recover from an attack with a weapon of mass destruction, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Rep Pascrell, Bill, Jr. (D,NJ)

I suspect that this will be similar to HR 2356 from the 112^th Congress. That bill was reported by the House Homeland Security Committee (and discharged from the other committees to which it was assigned), but it never actually made it to the floor.

It is odd that this is being introduced so late in the 113^th Congress and it only has one co-sponsor, Rep. King (R,NY).