Bills Introduced – 12-11-14

As the last week (hopefully) of the 113^th Congress finishes up there were 54 bills introduced yesterday in the House and Senate. Two of those (at any other time of the session) might be of specific interest to readers of this blog:

HR 5855 To require a report on procurement supply chain vulnerabilities within the Department of Defense. Sponsor - ep. Grayson, Alan [D-FL-9]

HR 5868 - To provide for a study by the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies on the impact of diverting certain freight rail traffic to avoid urban areas, and for other purposes. Sponsor - Rep. Ellison, Keith [D-MN-5]

Not much chance of either of these coming to the floor in the House much less getting to the President, so I doubt that I’ll even bother trying to report on them once their printed.

House Passes HR 5855 – DHS FY2013 Appropriations Bill

Last night the House passed HR 5855, the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2013 in a nearly party-line vote (234-182; 16 Republicans against and 17 Democrats for). I did not see any amendments that directly affected the CFATS program, chemical security, or cybersecurity, though I have not checked each of the many spending changes. There was one amendment that did address the TSA Surface Security Inspection program, but it was defeated in a bi-partisan vote.

TSA Inspector Funding

An amendment was offered by Rep. Turner (R,NY) that would have limited spending of TSA Surface Security Inspectors to $20M. According to Mr. Turner (Congressional Record; H3638):

“My amendment today seeks to limit the inspector program budget to $20 million, which would substantially reduce its size, and allow the saved money to be put forward in other more effective surface programs, such as canine detection units, particularly at bus and rail stations.”

This amendment was defeated on a roll-call vote of 101-314. There were 99 Republicans and 2 Democrats voting in the affirmative.

Critical Infrastructure Designation

The Terry (R,NE) amendment that I discussed briefly yesterday was never actually brought to the floor for consideration.

Spending Changes

There were a large number of spending change amendments offered and many were adopted. Most of them took the form of:

‘On page X, Line Y reduce the dollar amount by $XXXXXX and on page X2, Line Y2 increase the dollar amount by the same amount.’

Any funding increase had to be offset by a corresponding decrease somewhere else, so amenders had to find a program they didn’t like to steal from to improve funding for one of their pet programs. There were, to be sure, a number that just removed money and put it towards deficit reduction.

Tracking down each of these to determine their actual significance is time consuming at best. I’ll just wait for the enrolled version of the bill to be printed by the GPO and check for spending changes of interest there.

HR 5855 Begins Floor Debate

Yesterday the House began consideration of HR 5855, the DHS FY2013 appropriations bill under an open rule. A number of amendments were offered, passed/rejected in yesterday’s debate; none directly concerned chemical security or cybersecurity matters.

To date only one amendment has been pre- printed in the Congressional Record (which gives priority to consideration in the floor debate) that deals with cybersecurity issues. Rep. Terry (R,NE) introduced Amendment #1 that would prohibit funds being used “for the designation of critical infrastructure in the banking, telecommunications, or energy sector for cybersecurity purposes”. This would effectively prevent (if adopted) any cybersecurity regulation of critical infrastructure cybersecurity, at least during FY 3013.

The debate will continue today and possibly tomorrow.

Congressional Hearings – Week of 06-04-12

Both the Senate and House will be in town this week. That would normally mean that there would be a decent number of hearings to pay attention to. For some reason, however, there aren’t a lot of hearings scheduled in either body and none concerning the normal topics of this blog. That doesn’t mean that we can ignore Congress this week, there are two bills scheduled to make it to the floor of the House that could affect the chemical security or cybersecurity folks that read this blog; both are funding bills.

HR 5325

The first bill on the agenda (the House actually started consideration last week) is the Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2013. I haven’t mentioned this bill yet as it doesn’t have anything in the bill or the Committee Report that mentions cybersecurity. It is being considered under an open rule so that just about anything can be proposed as an amendment from the floor. I’ll be watching for anything cyber-related.

HR 5855

The big bill for this blog is the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2013. I’ve discussed the CFATS related issues in the bill’s Report. This will also be considered under an open rule so we can expect to see more in both chemical security and cybersecurity introduced on the floor. Other possible amendment topics of potential interest include port security and surface transportation security mentions.

The Majority Leader’s web site says that this bill may possibly be considered this week so we probably won’t see any action until the end of the week and it almost certainly won’t have a final vote this week. This will be well worth watching though so expect updates during the week as proposed amendments are published in the Congressional Record.

Congressional Hearings – Week of 5-29-12

The House took off the week before the Memorial Day Weekend and the Senate is taking the week after off. So we only have to worry about hearings in the House this week. Those will include a hearing on the TSA Surface Security program and a rules hearing on a number of spending bills. Additionally the House is scheduled to consider a WMD bill on the floor.

TSA Hearing

The Transportation Security Subcommittee of the House Homeland Security Committee will be holding a hearing on “TSA’s Surface Inspection Program: Strengthening Security or Squandering Scant Resources?” on Thursday. The only surface security regulations really in place deal with rail security for hazardous chemicals. Perhaps Chairman Rogers (R,AL) will ask about the status of the long overdue regulations for security of truck transportation of the same chemicals.

No witness list is currently available. We can expect that there will be at least one witness from TSA.

Spending Bills

The House Rules Committee will be holding a hearing on Wednesday to formulate the rule for a number of appropriations bills; three of which may address issues of interest to the chemical security and cybersecurity communities. The one bill of certain interest will be H.R. 5855, Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2013; I’ve addressed this bill in some detail at the committee print stage. Three other bills will also be addressed at that hearing; the two of potential interest will be:

• H.R. 5743 — Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013

• H.R. 5325—Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2013

I’ll be looking at each of these bills in more detail as the week progresses.

Floor of the House

According to the House Majority Leader’s web site the House is currently scheduled to consider HR 2764, the WMD Intelligence and Information Sharing Act of 2011 under suspension of the rules this week; this means it will require a 3/5 majority to pass. Scheduling it in this manner means that the leadership believes that this bill will pass without significant opposition.

Three of the four bills being considered by the House Rules Committee this week may make it to the floor on Thursday. The one not currently on the schedule is the DHS appropriations bill.