Bills Introduced – 01-08-19

Yesterday with both the House and Senate in Washington there were 132 bills introduced. Of these 8 may receive further attention in this blog:

HR 265 Making appropriations for Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies programs for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2019, and for other purposes. Rep. Bishop, Sanford D., Jr. [D-GA-2]

HR 266 Making appropriations for the Department of the Interior, environment, and related agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2019, and for other purposes. Rep. McCollum, Betty [D-MN-4]

HR 267 Making appropriations for the Department of Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development, and related agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2019, and for other purposes. Rep. Price, David E. [D-NC-4]

HR 269 To reauthorize certain programs under the Public Health Service Act and the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act with respect to public health security and all-hazards preparedness and response, to clarify the regulatory framework with respect to certain nonprescription drugs that are marketed without an approved drug application, and for other purposes. Rep. Eshoo, Anna G. [D-CA-18]

HR 327 To prohibit entities from requiring individuals to submit to arbitration for disputes arising from a security breach, and for other purposes. Rep. Lieu, Ted [D-CA-33]

HR 328 To require the Secretary of State to design and establish a Vulnerability Disclosure Process (VDP) to improve Department of State cybersecurity and a bug bounty program to identify and report vulnerabilities of internet-facing information technology of the Department of State, and for other purposes. Rep. Lieu, Ted [D-CA-33]

HR 334 To increase cybersecurity education and job growth, and for other purposes. Rep. Lieu, Ted [D-CA-33]

HR 350 Making continuing appropriations for the Coast Guard. Rep. Van Drew, Jefferson [D-NJ-2]

FY 2019 Spending Bills

It looks like the Democratic leadership in the House has accepted that the Senate will not take action on the two spending bills that they had passed last week (no surprise here). So they are going to go through the ‘normal’ legislative process for each of the four (of five) spending bills that were not passed last session (well they missed the DHS bill, but I think they are going to go with the CR for DHS that was passed last week for the time being). I have not included HR 264, Financial Services and General Government, in the list above because there is little in that bill that I am interested in.

The House will begin considering these bills today, starting with HR 264. This is a major change from the legislative plan for the week that was announced last Friday. The GPO has not yet printed any of these bills (they are behind because of the large (but not unusual) number of bills introduced in the first days of this session), so we will only get to see ‘draft’ copies on the Majority Leader’s web site sometime the day before the bill is considered. The leadership is already violating their ’72 hour’ rule, but this was to be expected in ‘fast moving’ situations like this.

The House Rules Committee adopted a single rule yesterday for the consideration of all four of the spending bills. It provides for a closed rule with limited debate and no amendments. I expect that we will see a party-line vote on each of these bills in the House and the Senate will ignore them as well (at least until some sort of agreement is reached between the Democrats and the President).

In any case, the Democrats will point to these actions as ‘proof’ that they are actively working on opening the government. Political grandstanding? Just a little.

HR 269

This is the medical emergency response bill that I discussed yesterday. It was passed in the House last night on a very strongly bipartisan vote of 401 to 17 with very little debate. It will be interesting to see how long it takes the Senate to take up this bill, but there is no guarantee that it will. If it does reach the Senate floor, I expect that it will do so under their unanimous consent process.

Reader Comment – 02-11-13 – Sharing with Medical Community

This morning Stu Fischbeck left a comment on my blog post from Friday about the introduction of S 242. This was the bill that reauthorized some public health and medical emergency response programs. I suggested that the bill ought to include language requiring facilities with significant amounts of toxic inhalation hazard (TIH) chemicals to provide MSDS to local medical facilities so that they could make appropriate plans for mass casualty operations in the event of a catastrophic leak. Stu asked:

“Do you have any data on how many in industry already coordinate with hospitals, FDs, local EMAs, etc.?”

Notifications are required to be made to local fire departments and local emergency planning committees (LEPC) for certain facilities under CERCLA. This should certainly cover the significant holders of TIH chemicals. Unfortunately LEPCs don’t exist everywhere and the ones that do vary widely in their efficacy.

As best I can tell there is no requirement for anyone to talk to the medical community about the potential treatment requirements for a mass casualty event due to a catastrophic event at a chemical facility.

Different toxic chemicals are going to require different treatment regimes. It seems to me that knowledge of the potential toxic agent in advance would allow the local medical community to do some advance preparation for the required treatment. At the very least the triage personnel are going to have to know what symptoms to look for to separate the chemical casualties from the other related injuries.

Stu makes a valid point. There are almost certainly folks that are already doing this, but from the limited number of conversations that I have had and the news reports that I have seen related to actual incidents there seems to be little to indicate that this is anything but a minority. This isn’t out of any evil intent; too many people think that doctors can recognize the source of all ailments and treat them appropriately with the material on hand. If they can’t we simply sue them for malpractice.

Most doctors have little or no experience dealing with gross exposures to toxic chemicals. Even if they do have some specific experience it is not likely to be on the chemical in question for a particular release; those releases come too far and in between for much of an experience base to have been acquired. That combined with the special equipment and drugs that may be necessary to treat the casualties means that prior planning is an absolute requirement for an effective response to this type of situation.

While this probably should have been included in the CERCLA regulations, it is certainly time to correct the oversight. I think this legislation is a good point to go back and add it to the EPA regulations as it directly effects public health measures and planning that should be done prior to a terrorist attack or a terrible accident that results in a large release of toxic chemicals.