Review – Committee Hearings – Week of 6-1-25

This week with the House and Senate back in Washington, there is a relatively light hearing schedule. While there are still budget hearings scheduled, we have the first two spending bill markups scheduled in subcommittees of the House Appropriations Committee. There is one nomination hearing in the Senate that might be of interest here.

Nomination Hearing

On Thursday the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will hold a business meeting to consider six pending nominations. There are two that may be of specific interest here:

Sean Cairncross to be National Cyber Director, and

Sean Plankey to be Director, CISA

 

For more information on these hearings, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/committee-hearings-week-of-6-1-25 - subscription required.

Review – Committee Hearings – Week of 2-9-25

This week with both the House and Senate in Washington, the hearing schedule picks up a bit over last week. There is one hearing in the House on port security issues. The Senate continues their work on presidential nominations, but they do expand the list of topics covered, including an FY 2025 budget resolution markup.

Port Security

On Tuesday the Subcommittee on Transportation and Maritime Security of the House Homeland Security Committee will hold a hearing on “Examining the PRC's Strategic Port Investments in the Western Hemisphere and the Implications for Homeland Security, Part I”.

Nomination Hearings

On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to hold a business meeting to vote on the Patel nomination.

There are two other nomination hearings scheduled this week for committees to hear testimony from the nominees:

• Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions - Lori M. Chavez-DeRemer to serve as Secretary of Labor, and

• Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions - Linda McMahon to serve as Secretary of Education

Budget Hearings

On Wednesday and Thursday the Senate Budget Committee is scheduled to hold a business meeting to conduct a markup of their version of the FY 2025 Budget.

 

For more information about these hearings, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/committee-hearings-week-of-2-9-25 - subscription required.

Three CSB Nominations Sent to Senate

Yesterday the Senate received three nominations for Board Members for the Chemical Safety and Inspection Board (CSB). The CSB is supposed to have five Board Members, but Dr. Katherine A. Lemos, the Board Chair, has been serving as the sole Board Member since she was confirmed in 2020.

The three new nominees are:

• Stephen A. Owens, of Arizona, to be a Member of the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board for a term of five years.

• Jennifer Beth Sass, of Maryland, to be a Member of the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board for a term of five years.

• Sylvia E. Johnson, of North Carolina, to be a Member of the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board for a term of five years.

The White House web site provides brief biographies for the three nominees. Owns is a lawyer with regulatory experience at both the US EPA and the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality. Dr Sass currently works for the Natural Resources Defense Council advocating for regulations that are consistent with science, health policy, and environmental law. Dr Johnson currently works for the National Education Association working on COVID-19 related issues, but she does have a background in Biomedical Engineering and Industrial Hygiene.

It is not unexpected that two of the Biden nominees have backgrounds that include environmental activism. Nor is this necessarily a bad thing. The mandate of the CSB is to investigate significant chemical accidents, analyze the results of those investigations to detect systemic issues that could affect the wider chemical infrastructure and to advocate for changes to rectify those shortcomings. Environmental activists have a unique perspective that could provide interesting solutions to the problems that their investigators find.

I know that industry would rather have members with more of a manufacturing background so that they would understand the problems and limitations that industry needs to work with in pursuing their chemical safety goals. Trump, an industry friendly President, had a chance to pack the CSB with five people from that background; he only nominated Lemos. Instead of advocating for the disbanding of the Board, he could have ensured that more people with an industry background were on the Board. Too late now.

Committee Hearings – Week of 1-24-21

With just the Senate in Washington this week the hearing schedule is very light. There will be Senate confirmation hearings (including DHS Secretary) and one organizational committee hearing in the House.

Energy and Commerce Organization

The House Energy and Commerce Committee will hold their organizational hearing on Friday. Nothing exciting here; just formal announcement of chairs and ranking members of the subcommittees and the adoption of committee rules and jurisdictions of the subcommittees (more on that in the Commentary section below).

Commentary

First, the Energy and Commerce subcommittee jurisdictions: It is always interesting to see how wide the scope of the responsibilities of House subcommittees is crafted. The wording in the E&C jurisdiction document is designed to be expansive rather than restrictive. The term ‘cybersecurity’ is specifically included in the description of jurisdiction in five of the six subcommittees listed; the only exception is the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations and their purview is wide enough to incorporate cybersecurity related topics. DHS oversight for all topics specified is included in the scope statement for all but the Consumer Protection and Oversight subcommittees.

Of particular interest in this blog is coverage for the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) program. CFATS is not specifically mentioned (it is a relatively small program by federal agency standards) but it would be included in the jurisdiction of two subcommittees; Environment and Climate Change (under the ‘industrial plant security, including cybersecurity’ listing) and Communications and Technology (under the ‘; the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in the Department of Homeland Security’ listing).

Last topic: Senate confirmation hearings. The Senate has approved two nominations to date and will almost certainly approve a third today; all with strong bipartisan majorities. Things will start to get trickier. One of the major roadblocks ahead is the current failure to be able to reach an agreement on the organization of the Senate. With a 50-50 split Sen Schumer (D,NY) and Sen McConnel (R,TN) have yet to decide how to split the chairs of the Senate Committees and thus the number of Republicans and Democrats on those committees. Generally speaking the Committees are still operating under their 116^th Congress organization.

With non-controversial nominees (like the first three) this is not a major headache. When we start to look at potentially more problematic nominees (like Alejandro Mayorkas, for DHS) this starts to cause problems. Sen Hawley (R,MO) has placed a hold on Mayorkas nomination because of immigration issues and this will be a topic that will likely resonate in this week’s hearings. While Sen Peters (D,MI) is Chair, the Committee website still shows eight Republican members to five Democrats. I suspect that Mayorkas will be approved by the Committee, but the Hawley hold will still delay the consideration on the Senate floor.

Congressional Hearings – Week of 3-2-14

With Monday’s submission of the President’s FY 2015 budget to Congress (one month late, again) this week officially starts the annual spending scramble. The hearing schedule in the House reflects this, but the Senate is officially sitting out the budget process this year so we have a couple of weeks yet before they join this particular game. So the Senate hearings this week will include a DHS appointment hearing, a look at crude trains and an oversight hearing about EO 13650.

Budget Hearings

The annual spending scramble officially starts on Wednesday with the House Budget Committee holding their initial hearing on the President’s FY 2015 budget. Only one witness is scheduled, Ms. Burwell the OMB Director. There will only be broad overviews of the budget discussed here.

The only other budget hearing this week of specific interest to readers of this blog will be the House Armed Services Committee’s initial hearing on the President’s FY 2015 National Defense Authorization Budget. This will be a contentious hearing about the President’s propose Defense Department cuts, but cybersecurity will almost certainly be mentioned. The interesting stuff will come out in the subcommittee hearings in the coming weeks.

DHS Nominations

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will be holding a nomination hearing on Wednesday looking at Mr. Brothers for S&T Under Secretary and Mr. Taylor for Intelligence and Analysis Under Secretary. Cybersecurity will certainly be a topic here.

Rail Safety

The Surface Transportation and Merchant Marine Infrastructure, Safety and Security Subcommittee of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee will hold a hearing on Thursday looking at Enhancing our Rail Safety: Current Challenges for Passenger and Freight Rail. The witness list right now is organizational rather than by name. Witnesses will be representing the:

• Federal Railroad Administration

• Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration

• National Transportation Safety Board

• Federal Communications Commission

• American Petroleum Institute

• Association of American Railroads

The PHMSA and API witnesses indicate that crude oil trains will be discussed, no surprise there. The apparent odd-ball of the list, the FCC, means that positive train control (PTC) issues will be discussed as the FCC is one of the current impediments being blamed on potential delays in PTC implementation.

To get a real discussion of the crude oil issues going, the Subcommittee should have included a representative from Railway Supply Institute and let a panel including them the API and the AAR duke it out in a cage match. All three of these organizations will each have a major stake in the outcome of any Congressional action on crude-by-rail shipments and will be responsible for any real solution to the safety issues involved. Leaving the RSI out of this hearing is a sure way for them to get stuck holding the blame sack.

EO 13650

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will be holding an oversight hearing on the President’s Executive Order on Improving Chemical Facility Safety and Security. Okay, by definition, Congress doesn’t have any oversight authority over an Executive Order but that’s what Senator Boxer is calling this. No witness list has yet been posted, but if this hearing is to mean anything at all (I’m not holding my breath, Sen. Boxer’s committee accomplishes little if anything of importance) it will include the three Assistant Secretary’s that head the Working Group.

On the Floor

The House has a full election-year schedule going this week. There are lots of political posturing bills that will get full debate and party line votes. Some real work will get done though.

As I predicted HR 4076, the Home Heating Emergency Assistance Through Transportation (HHEAT) Act of 2014, will come to the floor this week. It will be considered on Tuesday under suspension of the rules and will pass with near unanimous support (there may not even be a recorded vote). There will not be any discussion of the increased risk of transportation accidents by allowing the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to continue its emergency suspension of transportation safety rules to allow timely fuel oil and propane deliveries to the hard hit communities in the north and east. I’m pretty sure that more lives will be saved from cold injuries than will be expended in transportation related accidents, but that trade off should be specifically addressed in the debate; it won’t. Life-and-death cost-benefit analysis is not something that politicians are willing to go on the record debating; it opens them up to too much potential criticism.