Both the House and Senate will be working in Washington this
week. There is lots of different stuff on the agenda as the summer recess
approaches. Hearing of specific interest to readers of this blog will include:
∙ Homeland Security spending bill markup;
∙ Oversight hearings on DHS and PHMSA;
∙ WMD control;
∙ CSB nomination; and
∙ S
1732 markup.
DHS Spending
The House Appropriations Committee will be marking
up the FY 2015 DHS spending bill on Tuesday. A copy
of the bill approved last week by their Homeland Security Subcommittee is
available as is a copy of the draft
report for the bill. This bill will almost certainly be introduced later
this week.
DHS Oversight
The House Judiciary Committee will be holding an oversight
hearing on Tuesday. The only witness will be Secretary Johnson. I doubt
that there will be much mention of chemical security or surface transportation
security at this hearing, but you never can tell.
PHMSA Oversight
The Energy and Power Subcommittee of the House Energy and
Commerce Committee will be holding an oversight
hearing on the Pipeline Safety,
Regulatory Certainty, and Job Creation Act of 2011 and related issues on
Tuesday. Some of the witness testimony is already available. The witness list
includes
∙ Dianne Black, County of Santa Barbara, California;
∙ Ron Bradley, PECO Energy;
∙ Stacy Cummings, Interim Executive Director, PHMSA;
∙ Donald Santa, Interstate Natural Gas Association of America;
∙ Carl Weimer, Pipeline Safety Trust; and
∙ Stan Wise, Georgia Public Service Commission
There have been some congressional complaints about how
quickly PHMSA has been implementing the requirements of the 2011 bill. Expect
to see some adversarial questioning of the relatively new Interim Executive
Director.
WMD Hearing
There will be a joint
hearing by two subcommittees of the House Homeland Security Committee on
Tuesday on “Weapons of Mass
Destruction: Bolstering DHS to Combat Persistent Threats to America”. The
current witness list includes DHS representatives from Office of Health
Affairs, S&T and the Nuclear Detection Office. There are two
non-governmental witnesses:
∙ Alan D. Cohn,
Steptoe & Johnson, LLP; and
∙ Rick
"Ozzie" Nelson, Center for Strategic and International Studies
According to the Committee
website the hearing “will review the Department of Homeland Security’s
(DHS) proposal to consolidate certain weapons of mass destruction (WMD)
and explosives defense activities at DHS headquarters to
ensure America is prepared to combat these threats.”
CSB Nomination
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will be
holding a nomination
hearing on Wednesday. Of the two nominees being considered readers of this
blog will probably be most interested in Kristen
Kulinowski to be a Member of the Chemical Safety Board. Kulinowski is a
chemist with expertise in nanomaterial safety.
S 1732 Markup
The Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee
will be holding a markup
hearing on S 1732, the Comprehensive Transportation and Consumer Protection
Act of 2015, on Wednesday. This bill was introduced on Friday and the bill has
not yet been published by the GPO but the Committee does have a committee
print available. A quick look at the table of contents indicates that there
may be numerous provisions of interest to readers of this blog; expect a review
from me before Wednesday’s hearing.
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