Committee Hearings – Week of 07-22-18

This week with both the House and Senate in session but the House preparing to head home for the LONG summer recess, there is a slightly abbreviated hearing schedule. There are only two hearings of interest, the ‘last’ spending bill and a homeland security markup hearing.

DHS Spending Bill

On Wednesday the House Appropriations Committee will markup the FY 2019 DHS spending bill. The Homeland Security Subcommittee finished their work last week. The draft the Committee is working on does not include language for a short-term extension of the CFATS program, but does continue funding for the program through FY 2019,

Homeland Security Markup

Tomorrow the House Homeland Security Committee will hold a markup hearing on 12 bills and one resolution. These will include the following bills of potential interest to readers of this blog:

• HR 6443, the Advancing Cybersecurity Diagnostics and Mitigation Act; and

• HR 6438, the DHS Countering Unmanned Aircraft Systems Coordinator Act.

I have not yet reviewed either of the above bills as the official versions have yet to be published. I will look at the Committee Drafts (linked above) later today and comment as necessary. Interestingly HR 6401, Chairman McCaul’s counter UAV bill is not on the list for consideration tomorrow. That bill was published this weekend and at first glance looks very similar to S 2836, Chairman Johnson’s senate bill. More on that later.

On the Floor

Starting late today the Senate will take up HR 6147, the FY 2019 Interior, Environment and Related Agencies (IER) spending bill. There is at least one news report that there is a chance that the Senate may add the THUD spending (S 3023) to the already expanded mix of HR 6147. That might cause problems for the House since they have not yet dealt with the House version of that spending measure (HR 6072) and the membership has not had their chance to muddy the legislative waters with floor amendments. It is going to be an interesting summer.

There is a chance that the House will have a chance late this week to vote on the conference version of HR 5515, the FY 2019 DOD authorization bill. Other than that, there is nothing on the calendar of specific interest for the last week before vacation in the House.

WARNING: With the long vacation coming up there will be a large number of bills offered in the House this week so that members have something to talk about while they are in their districts during the coming weeks. A larger percentage than normal will not see the light of legislative day, but they will get talked about.

Bills Introduced – 07-19-18

Yesterday with the House and Senate preparing to leave Washington for the weekend there were 49 bills introduced. Of those, three may be of specific interest to readers of this blog:

HR 6438 To amend the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to establish in the Department of Homeland Security an Unmanned Aircraft Systems Coordinator, and for other purposes.  Rep. Perry, Scott [R-PA-4]

HR 6443 To amend the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to authorize the Secretary of Homeland Security to establish a continuous diagnostics and mitigation program at the Department of Homeland Security, and for other purposes. Rep. Ratcliffe, John [R-TX-4] 

HR 6461 To amend title 49, United States Code, to establish in the Transportation Security Administration a National Deployment Office, and for other purposes. Rep. Watson Coleman, Bonnie [D-NJ-12]

There were a number of other homeland security related bills introduced yesterday, but none of specific interest here. Interestingly most of these bills were proposed by leadership of the House Homeland Security Committee (on both sides of the dais) and will be considered next week in a full committee hearing.

I will be watching 6438 to see if it contains counter UAS language instead of just coordinating DHS UAS operations.

I suspect that 6443 will be focused on federal IT programs, but I will be watching (as normal) for control system security information.

On HR 6461 I will be watching for surface transportation language, but I suspect that this will focus on passenger air security technology deployments.