S 1804 Introduced – Aviation Security

As I mentioned in an earlier blog post Sen. Tester (D,MT) introduced S 1804, the Aviation Security Stakeholder Participation Act of 2013. As I suspected this is pretty nearly a companion bill to HR 1204 which was recently passed in the House. The language in this proposed legislation is very nearly identical to the language reported in, and subsequently passed by, the House.

The only significant differences between the House bill and this one is that the membership of the Aviation Security Advisory Committee (ASAC) would, in this version, also include members representing “airport construction and maintenance contractors, [and] labor organizations representing employees of airport construction and maintenance contractors”{§44946(c)(1)(C)}. To accommodate the additional personnel the Committee membership is expanded from a minimum of 32 members to 34 members {§44946(c)(1)(B)}.

None of these changes will affect the chances of the bill passing. If the Senate takes up S 1804 (probably in an end of day unanimous-consent, no-vote, approval) it will be substituted for the House language an HR 1204 and be returned to the House. If this is the only change made, I would expect that the House to accept the Senate’s amendment and approve the bill.

Bills Introduced – 12-11-13 – Part II

Well, the Senate finally completed its speechifying and adjourned for the day which allowed the admin folks a chance to get the introduced legislation at least listed. There were only six bills introduced in the very lengthy day but one of them may be of specific interest to readers of this blog:

S 1804 Latest Title: A bill to amend title 49, United States Code, to direct the Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security (Transportation Security Administration) to establish an Aviation Security Advisory Committee, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Sen Tester, Jon (D,MT)

Actually, I suspect that this bill is actually a companion bill to HR 1204 which was just passed in the House last week. Then again, Tester may have been less than satisfied with the language in the House version and wanted to start fresh with his own language. We’ll see when the bill is published by the GPO.