Senate THUD Fails Cloture Test

Yesterday the Senate failed to close debate on S 1243, the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2014. The cloture vote failed by a partisan vote of 54 – 43. At the same time the House leadership pulled HR 2610, the House version of the bill, from consideration on the floor of the House. These two bills are shaping up to be a major focus of the budget conflict between the conservative wing of the Republican Party and the Democrats.

No more action will be taken on either bill until after the Congress returns on September 9^th.

THUD Amendments – 7-25-13

During floor action in the Senate yesterday on S 1243, the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2014 (THUD), two new amendments were introduced that might be of interest to the chemical transportation safety and cybersecurity communities; one of which was passed by unanimous consent.

Cybersecurity Amendment Adopted

The Senate adopted a cybersecurity amendment as part of an en bloc adoption of three amendments without debate. SA 1803 (Cong Rec 7-25-13 Pg S5975) was introduced by Sen. McCain (R,AZ) and it was almost identical to SA 1780 that he introduced yesterday. The same withholding of cybersecurity funds pending the same report is being required by the new amendment. The only difference is that it does not list which congressional committees should be the recipients of the report; instead is specifies that it should be submitted “to the appropriate committees of Congress”.

HAZMAT Transportation Amendment

Sen. Menendez (D,NJ) introduced SA 1812 (Cong Rec 7-25-13, Pg S 5977) that would require the Administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) on the safety of transporting hazardous materials over movable railroad bridges. The study would be specifically required to address {§155(b)}:

• The adequacy of span locking and its relation to the practice of trains passing over bridges displaying a stop signal; and

• The adequacy of training received by train crews to inspect their route before passing over a bridge displaying a stop signal.

This amendment is almost certainly related to the Paulsboro, NJ train derailment in November of last year that involved a movable bridge. According to news reports there were a number of previously reported problems with track alignment and signals on that bridge before the accident. Earlier this month an NTSB public hearing also addressed this issue.

Interestingly, the completed report is not required to be submitted to Congress, but to be placed on the FRA web site. Not that I’m a big fan of reports to Congress, but a report placed on a web site (while probably more available to the public) will be easier for Congress to ignore in consideration of any revisions to hazmat transportation safety laws. 

This is another amendment that will probably be approved without discussion or vote.

Moving Forward

The Senate will resume consideration of S 1243 on Monday afternoon.

Senate Begins Consideration of S 1243 – FY 2014 DOT Spending bill

On Thursday the Senate officially began the consideration of S 1243, the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2014. No action was taken beyond the Clerk’s reading of the title of the bill in and the first cloture motion being submitted. Actual action will begin next week with the vote on the cloture motion to close debate on proceeding to consider the bill on Tuesday.

No amendments to S 1243 were filed on Thursday or Friday (only a pro forma session Friday so nothing could be filed then in any case. I expect that we will start to see the amendment process crank up on Tuesday.

BTW: The House is not currently scheduled to take up HR 2610, the House version of the bill, according to the Majority Leader’s web site, but that may change as the Rules Committee is scheduled to take up the bill on  Monday evening. More on that in my weekly congressional hearing post.

HR 2610 Introduced – FY 2014 DOT

As I noted earlier Rep. Latham (R,IA) introduced HR 2610, the Departments of Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill, 2014. I normally follow this bill for chemical transportation issues, but this year it also includes a couple of minor cybersecurity references. As is typical there is little of specific interest in the actual language of the bill beyond the funding levels of the specific agencies. We have to look at the Committee Report to see the details that might be of real interest.

Cybersecurity

The Appropriations Committee has been generally supportive of department internal cybersecurity requests so far, but that is not true with this bill. They reduced the DOT internal network cybersecurity spending from $10 million to $2 million, noting [Report, pg 10] that:

“The Committee recommendation includes $2,000,000 to support the Secretary’s Cyber Security Initiative, which is $4,000,000 below the budget request and $8,000,000 less than the fiscal year 2013 enacted level. Because of the fiscal year 2013 continuing resolution, this account received $10,000,000, a $4,000,000 increase over that year’s budget request. With the funding provided in fiscal year 2014, the Department will receive a total of $12,000,000 over two years, equal to the requests of the two fiscal years.”

I sure hope that the DOT CIO is spending this year’s money wisely. If this stands through the legislative process, next year will be tight in DOT cybersecurity programs.

The only other cybersecurity mention comes in the Committee Report in the section concerning the FAA. Under the heading “Cyber Security and Protecting the National Airspace System” [pg 24] the Committee notes that:

“As FAA continues to make billion dollar investments in NextGen, the Agency must ensure that new systems are more secure than the legacy systems they replace or supplement, and new threats are not inadvertently introduced. A clear understanding of threats, vulnerabilities, and countermeasures is absolutely essential.”

No new money for the effort but the Committee does recommend that “FAA needs to take full advantage of ongoing DOD cyber work, which could provide invaluable insights on how to protect air traffic control systems.”

Interdepartmental Conflicts

The Appropriations Committee has an interesting oversight responsibility because of its control of the purse strings over the entire federal government. It gets a chance to see and influence/control competition between different departments of the Executive Branch to make sure that there isn’t too much duplication of work. There are two such cases addressed in this report; one dealing with security and one with safety.

In the report’s discussion of the Federal Transit Authority (FTA) spending it notes that the Committee has included language in the bill “prohibiting FTA from creating a permanent office of transit security” [Report pg 52]. It goes on to explain that the lead agency for transportation security is DHS in all modes “including rail and transit lines”.

In the safety case the issue is not so clear cut. In the PHMSA section of the Report [pg 65] they note that:

“The Committee is advised that the approval processes for Self Contained Breathing Apparatus (SCBA) respirator cylinders by both PHMSA and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health may be duplicative and potentially restrictive of competitive options.”

Since the division of labor here is not so clear, so the Committee resorts to the old congressional favorite; a report. PHMSA is given one year to report to the Committee “on whether these approval processes can be made more efficient”.

Special Permit Fees

The Obama Administration has each year attempted to raise funds for DOT by including a new fee for the processing and enforcing of PHMSA special permits and approvals in their budget proposal. Each year the Appropriations Committee has refused to include it in the spending bill. This year is no different, if somewhat less strident in their rejection. They do note [Report pg 64] that:

“Additional fees within this account should be considered in the context of authorizing legislation originating in the committees of jurisdiction.”

Moving Forward

This bill is likely to come to the floor in the next two weeks under an open rule. Various amendments will be proposed with many being adopted. It will then be ignored by the Senate who will probably adopt a modified version of S 1243 and then substitute its language for HR 2610 as adopted by the House. As I noted in my post on that bill the Senate Appropriations Committee also addressed the FAA cybersecurity issue as well as the PHMSA fee issue.

This bill may make it to the President’s desk before October 1^st, but that isn’t real likely in the current legislative atmosphere. It is still too early to tell if we will get an omnibus spending bill at the last minute or if there will be a continuing resolution. Early money would probably go for the CR.

S 1243 Introduced – FT 2014 DOT Spending

As I mentioned in an earlier post Sen. Murray (D,WA) introduced S 1243, the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2014. This bill does not actually include any specific chemical safety or cybersecurity (beyond Department IT cybersecurity spending) provisions. The Senate Appropriations Committee report does, however, include hazmat transportation safety provisions and limited cybersecurity provisions.

Cybersecurity

The Report accompanying this bill briefly addresses a unique set of control system security concerns. First the report notes that 77% of the Department’s cybersecurity budget (or $105 million) is directed to the budget of the Federal Aviation Administration. The Report then goes on to note that two separate DOT IG reports indicate “the FAA had not adequately implemented security requirements for its Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast System” (pg 33) or its En Route Automation Modernization System. The report concludes that the Committee “expects the Vice President of [FAA] Program Management to coordinate with the CIO for the FAA and for the Department to ensure the security of FAA’s systems is made a high priority”

PHMSA Spending

The spending bill provides modest increases in funding for PHMSA programs. Both the Pipeline Safety Fund and the HAZMAT show increases over the pre-sequester FY 2013 spending, but the HAZMAT program is slightly less than requested by the President. The President continues to propose a HAZMAT special permit fee in his budget, but “the Committee believes that such a fee should be established through the regulatory process or should be addressed through the authorization process” (pgs 90-1) and does not include that in the bill.

Moving Forward

Because of Constitutional limitations, this bill will probably not be brought up until the House passes their version of the bill at which time the Senate would typically substitute this language for the House wording, pass the bill (probably with a number of amendments) and then go to conference to iron out the differences.

In recent years this bill is usually folded into the Omnibus spending bill because Congress has been unable to pass all 13 of the individual appropriations bills before the end of the fiscal year on September 30^th. I suspect that that will occur this year as well.