H Res 1370 – Rule for Consideration of HR 8997 and HR 8998

Earlier today, the House Rules Committee met to formulate the rule for the consideration of HR 8997, the FY 2025 EWR spending bill, and HR 8998, the FY 2025 IER spending bill. The Committee crafted H Res 1370 to govern the consideration of the two bills. The Committee also published their Report to accompany H Res 1370.

The rule provides that both bills will be addressed separately under nearly identical structured rules. This limits debate and provides a limited number of amendments that will be considered for each bill on the floor of the House. The allowed amendments are listed in appendixes to Committee’s Report; 65 amendments for HR 8997 and 97 amendments for HR 8998. Text of the authorized amendments are included in the Report.

In my CFSN Detailed Analysis post (subscription required) for HR 8997 I identified one amendment submitted by Rep Moylan (R,Guam) that might be of interest here; that amendment was included in the list of 65 amendments to be offered on the floor – Amendment # 30 (link to original amendment submitted to the Rules Committee). That amendment proposed to increase and decreases the Department of Energy Energy Programs, Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response account to emphasize the need of Guam Power Authority for a Department of Energy assessment on the cybersecurity of Guam's energy installations.

In my CFSN Detailed Analysis post (subscription required) for HR 8997 I identified one amendment submitted by Rep DeSaulnier (D,CA) that might be of interest here; that amendment was not included in the floor package for the bill. DeSaulnier’s amendment would have increased the FY 2025 spending for the Chemical Safety Board by $1 million.

 

Rule Approved for Short Term CR

This afternoon the House Rules Committee met, in part, to approve the rule for the consideration of HJ Res 123, the Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2018, a short term continuing resolution extending the current CR (PL 115-56) until December 22^nd, 2017. The Committee approved a closed rule with one hour of debate and no amendments.

I had noted in an earlier post that the extension date might be extended to December 30^th, but that was not done. This means that there will only be two weeks before Congress will have to take action again on the FY 2018 spending. At this point, it looks like that next bill will be another CR until sometime early next year. If that happens, Congress will likely take a two-week recess for Christmas.

Rules Committee to Meet on HR 2576 – TSCA Revision

The House Rules Committee will meet Monday evening to formulate the rule for consideration of a House amendment to the Senate amendment to HR 2576, TSCA Modernization Act of 2015. This amendment is the bicameral, bipartisan compromise language that the press has been reporting on this week.

Changes

This 181-page substitute language is a very complex amendment of the current Toxic Substances Control Act (15 USC 2601-2609) that combines language from the versions passed in the House and Senate versions plus some other changes worked out by an unofficial conference group of Senators and Representatives (and the appropriate staff members).

The House Energy and Commerce Committee has published a four-page summary of the compromise language.

Moving Forward

Since this is compromise language that took a great deal of effort to work out, I do not suspect that the rule for the consideration of this bill will provide for much, if anything, in the way of amendments. No one is going to be completely satisfied with the language of this bill. Sen. Sanders (I,VT), for example, has come out against the revised language. Industry groups (see here and here) however, are apparently taking a more pragmatic stance and are generally supporting the language.

Commentary

The existing TSCA regulations are complex enough, but the amendments in this bill are going to make it even more so. The big problem is the amendment process. Congressional bills do not generally show the revised language; they show the changes that are to be made. For example, one of the many changes (in this case to 15 USC 2605) in this bill reads {§6(2)}:

“(2) in subsection (a)—

“(A) by striking ‘‘finds that there is a reasonable basis to conclude’’ and inserting ‘‘determines in accordance with subsection (b)(4)(A)’’;

(B) by inserting ‘‘and subject to section 18, and in accordance with subsection (c)(2),’’ after ‘‘shall by rule’’;

(C) by striking ‘‘to protect adequately against such risk using the least burdensome requirements’’ and inserting ‘‘so that the chemical substance or mixture no longer presents such risk’’;

This in a more conventional business format would read:

“(a)If the Administrator finds that there is a reasonable basis to conclude determines in accordance with subsection (b)(4)(A) that the manufacture, processing, distribution in commerce, use, or disposal of a chemical substance or mixture, or that any combination of such activities, presents or will present an unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment, the Administrator shall by rule and subject to section 18, and in accordance with subsection (c)(2), apply one or more of the following requirements to such substance or mixture to the extent necessary to protect adequately against such risk using the least burdensome requirements so that the chemical substance or mixture no longer presents such risk:”

This is certainly easier to read, but the full effect is still not clear because the references to other sections of TSCA (which are also amended) have to be read and understood before the actual import of the changes made to this paragraph can be understood.

In addition, many of the changes made in this revised language (and both of the other versions of the bill) are apparently minor wording changes that may only be of specific interest to lawyers arguing obscure provisions of the law. For example, a very common change made throughout the bill is the simple substitution of the word ‘information’ for the word ‘data’. While the two words have significantly different common definitions, you would have to read and analyze each instance of this change to understand the regulatory implications.

All of this makes it very difficult to conduct a real review. Even where wholesale changes have been made to the language, it is difficult to accurately assess their implication for chemical manufacturing and chemical safety because of all of the minor changes that are made in the supporting language.

Looking at the Committee summary of this revised language it certainly seems that this bill should be an improvement over the current TSCA language. A closer look, however, shows some significant problems that are glossed over in the revision.

For example, the new requirement for the EPA to make a decision within 90 days of the submission of a pre-manufacturing notice (PMN) for a new chemical as to whether or not there is a potential safety issue with the chemical that needs to be regulated. An effective review of the large number of new chemicals developed every year within that time frame is going to require a large number of new chemical safety experts at the EPA. There are no indications that Congress will fund such a staffing increase.

Another area of potential concern is the requirements for industry funding of research on new chemicals. This has always been a sticking point for the development of chemical safety information; such testing is important yet expensive. Chemical safety advocates are certainly heartened to see industry being stuck with the bill for large portions of this testing. In order to avoid stifling chemical innovation too much there are limits to how much a company can be forced to spend on such testing depending on the size of the organization. Small companies are responsible for a disproportionate share of the innovation in the chemical industry. This safety-testing funding proposal will almost certainly have an impact on the merger and acquisition process as larger companies will wait for the testing requirements on a new chemical to run out.

It certainly looks like this bill is going to pass and that is probably a good thing. But it is going to take years to see what the actual impacts on the chemical industry will be.

HR 8 Rule Approved by Rules Committee

This evening the House Rules Committee met to craft the rule for the Consideration of HR 8, the North American Energy Security and Infrastructure Act of 2015. The version of the bill being considered includes the original bill, amendments adopted by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, modified versions of HR 2295 (as a new §1111) and HR 2358 (as a new §1112), along with some technical amendments proposed by Rep. Upton (R,MI). The rule for HR 8 adopted this evening only covers the initial 1 hour of general discussion of the bill, not any amendment process on the House Floor.

Possible Amendments

A total of 94 proposed amendments to HR 8 were submitted to the Rules Committee. If a restrictive rule for the amendment process is adopted, it is likely that only selected amendments from this list would be considered on the House floor. It is not clear from tonight’s Committee actions that a restricted rule will be adopted at a future hearing.

Of those amendments there are only six that may be of specific interest to readers of this blog. They are:

#19 Norcross (D,NJ) – Directs  the Secretary of Energy to study weaknesses in the security architecture of certain smart meters currently available, and promulgate regulations to mitigate those weaknesses.

#21 Norcross – Allows the Secretary of Energy to address prospective grid security emergencies proactively.

#34 DeSaulnier (D,CA), Lowey (D,NY) – Requires  the Department of Energy to study the maximum level of volatility that is consistent with the safest practicable shipment of crude oil.

#84 Jackson-Lee (D,TX) – Directs the Secretary of Energy to submit to the Committees on Energy and Commerce and Natural Resources of the House of Representatives and the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources of the Senate a report on methods to increase electric grid resilience with respect to all threats, including cyber attacks, vandalism, terrorism, and severe weather, no later than 120 days after the date of enactment of the Act.

#92 Garamendi (D,CA) – Sets the maximum volatility threshold for crude oil transported by rail at 8.5 psi until a national standard is established.

#93 Franks (R,AZ) – Secures the most critical components of America's electrical infrastructure against the threat posed by a potentially catastrophic electromagnetic pulse.

Moving Forward

The initial consideration of HR 8 under the rule approved this evening will probably start tomorrow. Based upon the way the House dealt with HR 22 earlier this month it is very possible that there will not be any more work by the Rules Committee on HR 8 and that all 94 amendments submitted to date will be allowed to be introduced on the House floor. There is a minor chance that there will be an open amendment process on this bill that would consider any offered amendments.

The two crude oil volatility amendments (#34 and #92) of those listed above are the only ones that have any significant controversy associated with them. I would expect that all of the others could pass in floor votes. Since #34 would effectively only require a study and report to Congress, I think that it could pass. The Garamendi amendment will certainly be opposed vigorously by the oil industry and that limits it chance of passing.

Commentary

The Garamendi amendment is very similar in intent to HR 2379.

I did a somewhat detailed explanation of the shortcomings of the use of Reid Vapor Pressure measurement in my discussion of HR 1679. Garamendi continues to try to use this method even though it is ill suited to the differentiation of crude oil flammability or explosiveness. This is a fairly typical case of a politician not understanding the technical details of what he is attempting to legislate. The DeSaulnier amendment, on the other hand, requires the Secretary of Transportation to study and set a volatility standard for crude oil; leaving the technical details to the professionals.

Rules Committee Adopts Rule for Cyber Sharing Bills

This evening the House Rules Committee held a hearing to craft the rule for the consideration of HR 1560 and HR 1731 (Wednesday and Thursday respectively) later this week on the floor of the House. These two bills are the latest cybersecurity bills attempting to encourage and control the sharing of cybersecurity threat information between government agencies and the private sector.

Each bill will be considered separately under a structured rule with limited debate and a pre-selected set of amendment to be considered. If each bill is adopted (a pretty good certainty) the Clerk of the House is directed to mash the two bills together by adding the provisions of HR 1731 to the end of HR 1560. The revised HR 1560 will then be sent to the Senate for consideration.

General Bill Provisions

I have started to review these bills on a number of occasions both before and after their amendments in committee (HR 1560, intel; HR 1731, homeland security), but both bills have become even more convoluted than normal in the frequent (and apparently poorly coordinated) attempts to placate the concerns of the privacy advocates that have been the main opponents of previous attempts at crafting information sharing bills.

Both bills strive to allow and encourage the private sector to share cyber threat information with each other and federal agencies. In numerous places and manners there have been attempts made to make it clear that personally identifiable information is not included in the sharing process.

The differences in the two  bills is more a matter of focus and procedure rather than any real difference in intent. HR 1560 establishes a stand-alone process for information sharing while HR 1731 amends two sections of the United States Code (6 USC 148 and 6 USC 131) to provide statutory law to support that information sharing.

ICS Security Issues

Both of these bills were generally crafted to address information sharing about threats to IT systems. HR 1560 made a brief concession to the idea of industrial control systems also being vulnerable to cyber-attack by specifically including “industrial control systems, such as supervisory control and data acquisition systems, distributed control systems, and programmable logic controller” {§11(8)(B)} in the definition of ‘information system’. Otherwise there is no specific mention of measures to address the unique security threats to industrial control systems.

HR 1731 does go a bit further. In the amendment to 6 USC 148 (included in PL 113-282 passed last December) that modifies the mandatory composition of the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center the DHS ICS-CERT is added as a represented organization with the following specific responsibilities {§148(d)(1)(G)}:

∙ Coordinate with industrial control systems owners and operators;

∙ Provide training, upon request, to Federal entities and non-Federal entities on industrial control systems cybersecurity;

∙ Collaboratively address cybersecurity risks and incidents to industrial control systems;

∙ Provide technical assistance, upon request, to Federal entities and non-Federal entities relating to industrial control systems cybersecurity; and

∙ Shares cyber threat indicators, defensive measures, or information related to cybersecurity risks and incidents of industrial control systems in a timely fashion.

Floor Amendments

Before today’s hearing there were a number of amendments submitted to the Rules Committee for possible inclusion in the floor action on these bills; 25 for HR 1560 and 38 for HR 1731. The final rule selected 5 of those for HR 1560 and 11 for 1731.

There was one amendment that added an additional responsibility to those discussed for ICS-CERT about. That amendment (#15) would have added the responsibility to evaluates and make recommendations to the Under Secretary on industrial control systems that are essential for food, medicine, and medical device production or processing and wholesale delivery. This amendment will not be considered on the floor of the House.

There were two amendments {both submitted by Rep. Hahn (D,CA)} to HR 1560 that addressed port cybersecurity issues; one requiring a report to congress (#1) and the second prohibiting giving additional Port Security Grants to ports that had not conducted “a cybersecurity vulnerability assessment, as defined by the Secretary of Homeland Security” (#2). The first was one of the amendments that will be considered on the floor of the House.

Moving Forward

Both of these bills will probably pass this week in the House. There will be significant opposition to the bill because of perceived privacy issues, but I don’t think that it will be enough to derail either bill.

It is unlikely that the final version of HR 1560 will be considered by the Senate. The Senate will consider their own version of an information sharing bill next week. The language for that bill will then likely be transferred to HR 1560 setting up the need for a conference committee to work out the differences in the bill. It is very likely that a final version will be passed by both houses before the summer recess.

Rules Committee Announces Hearing on DHS Funding Bill

This evening the House Rules Committee announced that it would hold a hearing on Monday, January 12^th to formulate the rule for the consideration of HR 240, Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2015. As expected it looks like there will be floor amendments that will be offered to counter the President’s immigration initiatives, but the bill as introduced looks quite a bit like HR 4903 from the last session.

There have been some increases in proposed funding, but in general the bill seems to be very similar to what was introduced previously. I have scanned quickly through the portions of the bill that I typically watch. The table below shows how some of the programs that might be expected to be of specific interest to readers of this blog will fare under this bill.

	HR 4903 – 113th	HR 240 – 114th
Surface Trans Security	$121,303,000	$123,749,000
Infrastructure Protection	$1,139,499,000	$1,188,679,000
BioWatch	$86,891,000	$86,891,000
Port Security Grants	$100,000,000	$100,000,000

From my point of view, of course, what is important about this bill is what is missing. For the first time in a number of years there is not a provision in the bill that will extend the current CFATS program until the end of this funding period. This is, of course, because Congress finally took the CFATS program out of this annual budget dance by passing HR 4007 last month.

Rules Committee Hearing Set for NDA Wednesday

This evening the House Rules Committee announced a hearing for tomorrow evening to develop the rule for the consideration of S 1847 which will now be the 2015 NDA (actually titled the Carl Levin and Howard P. ‘Buck’McKeon National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year

2015 after the retiring Senate and House chairmen).

S 1847 was introduced as the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies is hereby renamed the `Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies and was passed in the Senate back in December of last year.

The new language hammered out between the Senate and House Armed Services Committees has been published on the Rules Committee site. A quick review of the table of contents of the bill (which is 27 pages long by itself) shows the following sections of the bill deal with cyber issues:

Sec. 1078. Notification of foreign threats to information technology systems impacting

national security.

Sec. 1631. Budgeting and accounting for cyber mission forces.

Sec. 1632. Reporting on cyber incidents with respect to networks and information

systems of operationally critical contractors.

Sec. 1633. Executive agents for cyber test and training ranges.

Sec. 1634. Cyberspace mapping.

Sec. 1635. Review of cross domain solution policy and requirement for cross domain

solution strategy.

Sec. 1636. Requirement for strategy to develop and deploy decryption service

for the Joint Information Environment.

Sec. 1637. Actions to address economic or industrial espionage in cyberspace.

Sec. 1638. Sense of Congress regarding role of reserve components in defense

of United States against cyber attacks.

Sec. 1639. Sense of Congress on the future of the Internet and the .MIL top level domain.

Rules Committee Hearing on CR

The House Rules Committee announced this afternoon that is was making an emergency addition to it previously scheduled hearing this afternoon to add a rule for the consideration of HJ Res 59, the Continuing Appropriations Resolution, 2014. This CR was supposed to be considered last week, but was held up continuing discussions within the Republican caucus about how to deal with attempting to defund Obamacare.

As introduced this CR would extend current funding until December 15^th and would extend the CFATS authorization until that date, pending further budget action.

Cyber Security Bill to Rules Committee

The House Rules Committee web site announced this afternoon that they would be holding a hearing on H.R. 4061, the Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2009 next week. The Rules Committee web site has a link to the revised version of the bill that was supposed to have been reported by the House Science and Technology Committee. As of the 5:00 pm EST today that report had still not been submitted even though it was directed to be reported back in November. The Rules Committee has announced that they would be accepting proposed amendments through 5:00 pm EST on Monday, February 1st. The bill provides a number of provisions that are designed to increase the study of cyber security issues and establish standards to protect a variety of federal and critical infrastructure computer systems. Unfortunately, there is only one reference to industrial control systems in the entire bill. Section 110 of the bill amends Section 20 of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Act (15 U.S.C. 278g–3), requiring the NIST to conduct “research associated with improving security of industrial control systems”. There are a number of places in this legislation where there should be references to industrial control systems in general a chemical production systems in particular. The potential changes could include: In the findings section of the bill:

On page 4, line 5, after ‘petroleum production and distribution,’ insert “chemical production and distribution,” On page 5, line 9, after ‘reliable information technology’ and insert “, vigorous industrial control systems”.

In §103, the Cybersecurity Strategic Research and Development Plan:

On page 7, line 10, rewrite to the end of the line after ‘secure networking’ to read “, information technology systems and industrial control systems;”

In §106, the Federal Cyber Scholarship for Service Program:

Throughout the section substitute the term “cyber technology” where ever the term ‘information technology’ is found.

These changes will help to expand federally funded research on security issues for industrial control systems.

H Res 885 for HR 2868

The House Rules Committee has published a copy of House Resolution 885 for the consideration of HR 2868 under suspension of the rules anytime through Saturday, November 7th. It provides for a debate in the Committee of the Whole House for 90 minutes on the version of the amendment in nature of a substitute found in Part A of the Rules Committee Report (111-387) which will be considered as an original bill. Amendments Only the ten amendments listed in Part B of the Rules Committee Report may be offered during the debate. There will be 10 minutes of debate allowed on each of the 10 proposed amendments. Those amendments were discussed briefly in my earlier blog today. That discussion was based on the summary of the amendments; the links provided below go to the actual amendments. The ones that will be offered in the debate will be (in the following order): 1. Thompson, Bennie (MS), #12 2. Barton (TX), #14 3. Hastings, Alcee (FL), #10 4. Dent (PA), Olson (TX), #4 5. Dent (PA), #5 6. Flake, Jeff (AZ), #3 7. Schrader (OR), Kissell, Larry (NC), #11 8. McCaul (TX), #1 9. Halvorson (IL), #2 10. Foster (IL), Luján (NM), #8 There will be 10 minutes of debate allowed on each of the 10 proposed amendments. More Information I will be reviewing the details of the amendments that I previously suggested had a chance of passing on the floor. If there is anything new that changes my earlier impression I will report that on the next blog on this bill. I expect that that will be early tomorrow morning when I get a chance to see today’s Congressional Record. That will probably let me know if we will see this bill on the floor tomorrow.

HR 2868 Amendments

The Rules Committee has posted a summary of the 20 amendments that it had received by yesterday’s deadline for their consideration in formulating the rule that will be used to consider HR 2868 on the floor of the House later this week. The actual amendments are not currently available, so I can’t go into any great detail on their provisions, but I will take a general look at what is available and make my predictions on what would happen if they make it to the floor discussion. Doomed Amendments There are a number of amendments that have been proposed by Republican members of either the Energy and Commerce Committee or Homeland Security Committee that are almost certainly pro-forma amendments that are doomed to failure before they are even debated. Most of these were already voted down on a party line vote in committee. I’ll put these into three groups; anti-IST, anti-citizen enforcement or pro-CFATS Extension. There are a number of amendments that fall into the anti-IST category in that they would void or greatly restrict the provisions of §2111. These include: Austria (R, OH) #6, Barton (R, TX) #14, #16, #18, #20, Dent (R, PA) #5, and Upton (R, MI) #17. I would expect that two or maybe three of these would get to the floor for consideration. There are two anti-citizen enforcement provisions; McCaul (R, TX) #1, and Upton (R, MI) #15. One of these should make it to a floor vote. Then there are two amendments that would strike Title I of the bill and simply extend the current CFATS authorization; Dent (R, PA) #4, and Olson(X, TX) #9. Depending on the wording of the actual length of the extension, both bills might make it to a floor vote. Possible to Pass Once again, I am only able to see summaries, so I can only make a semi-educated guess as to which of the remaining amendments have a chance to pass a floor vote. This will be almost as accurate as a football bowl pool list; you don’t go for absolute accuracy, just play the percentages. The only Republican amendment left on the list is amendment #3 submitted by Rep. Flake (R, AZ). He has been a single minded crusader against earmarks this year and his amendment reflects that; it would prohibit earmarks of DHS grants established under this legislation. Since there are no earmarks in the current bill, it might pass. A shoe-in for passage on the floor is the amendment submitted by Chairman Thompson. This will make “a number of technical corrections and fixes typos and verbiage issues”. These almost always pass. The next best chance for floor passage is amendment #10 from Rep Hastings (D, FL). It would establish the position of Deputy Director of the Office of Chemical Facility Security responsible for interagency coordination and liaising with State and local government officials. Not only is this probably necessary, but it is added bureaucracy, always a good bet in legislation. Another good bet for passage is a GAO report required by amendment #8 submitted by Rep Titus (D, NV). This would require GAO to “determine best practices for transporting the chemicals that are used and produced at the facilities covered by the underlying legislation”. While this may sound like a straight hazmat transportation issue it may be an effort by the American Railroad Association to get the government to side with it its arguments with shipper reference hazmat liability issues. If the later is the case, the chances of passage go down significantly. There are two IST amendments that have a chance of passing. The first is from Rep Schrader (D, OR) and Kissell (D, NC) that would require DHS to report on the potential impacts of the IST provisions on ‘manufacturers or retailers of pesticide or fertilizer’. Studies only require time and effort on the part of DHS so this will probably pass. Rep. Cardoza’s (D, CA) amendment would require the Administrator to choose between the lower cost IST alternatives. This may not pass because it apparently ignores the fact that the Administrator will seldom make this decision, State officials will. Members may not see that distinction though so it still may pass. I know, I’m waffling. Amendment #2, submitted by Rep Halvorson (D, IL) was almost a waste of time to submit. According to the summary it would “permit [emphasis added] the Secretary to provide guidance, tools, methodologies, or software to assist small covered chemical facilities in complying with the security requirements”. Permit, but not require; it can’t hurt anyone so it should pass. Rep Marshall (D, GA) submitted amendment #7 that would “provide for the use of E-Verify as an additional measure designed to verify and validate legal authorization to work in the U.S.” as part of the background check provisions of §2115. This should pass because no one wants illegal to take good paying jobs that might be security related positions. Deserves to Fail The only remaining amendment listed on the Rules Committee web page is one that deserves to fail in my opinion. It is amendment #8 by Rep Foster (D, IL) and Lujan (D, NM) that gives special treatment to university and academic labs. It would require the Secretary to develop “appropriate protocols and security procedures” for these facilities if they were determined to be high-risk facilities. It is interesting that just before I read these summaries of amendments I had an exchange of emails with a PHD chemist who was concerned about a letter he had received from the American Chemical Society that included a brief letter that they wanted him to send to his representative about the upcoming consideration for HR 2868. He sent it to me because he objected to the following passage about academic labs:

“The Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Act of 2009 (H.R. 2868) is expected to direct the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to design separate regulations for academic laboratories. As member of the American Chemical Society, I strongly support this regulatory distinction. Laboratories operate much differently than manufacturing sites. They often use more kinds of chemicals, but at much smaller amounts, on different timescales, and in experiments and processes that are frequently modified. This measure reduces the possibility that academic labs, a wellspring of our nation's scientific and technological innovation, would be forced to grapple with rules intended for industrial-scale facilities.”

He objected because he knows from personal experience that many (more probably most) academic labs suffer a severe blind spot when it comes to both safety and security. Now I have only been in one University chemistry lab (where I got my BS degree), but this reader confirms what I have heard from a number of graduates from a number of different universities, that university people dislike the inconvenience of security measures. They get in the way. The problem is that beyond the Top Screen, only facilities with significant amounts of dangerous chemicals are covered by the CFATS regulations. If a facility is determined to be a covered facility it needs to have rigorous security measures in place. It doesn’t matter if it is a university lab or chemical manufacturing facility, or a water treatment facility. If the risk is there the security measures need to be there. This is just one more instance of another group thinking that their place in life or society is more important than everyone else’s. They are demanding special attention because they are special. If they put our safety at risk, it is just too bad. It just gets in their way to try to establish minimal levels of security. This demand for special attention deserves the same treatment as all other such requests; a quick and firm denial. Moving Forward The Rules Committee will meet this afternoon and decide which of these amendments will make it to the floor. They will then craft a resolution explaining how the debate will be conducted. That resolution will not be printed at the GPO until tomorrow afternoon at the earliest. Fortunately the Rules Committee realizes this and will post a copy on their web site this evening. When that happens I will prepare a brief post outlining the rule. Then we wait and see when the matter actually comes to the floor. I keep hearing Wednesday, but that never comes directly from anyone in the Democratic House Leadership, so we don’t know for sure yet. Maybe we will hear something today.