Senate ENR Amends and Approves Cybersecurity Bills – 11-19-19

Yesterday the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee held a business meeting to consider three nominations and markup 19 bills. Those bills included three cybersecurity bills that have been covered in this blog. All three of those bills were amended and then passed on voice votes.

S 876, DOE Vet Training

The Committee considered S 875, the Energy Jobs for Our Heroes Act of 2019. A staff amendment was adopted by the Committee rewrote the proposed §1107(f) by removing the grant funding provisions and removed (g) the spending authorization provisions of the bill. A second amendment was proposed by Sen Lee (R,UT) and it was also adopted by the Committee. The Lee amendment provided more detailed information about what was to be included in the Report to Congress required by (h) {changed to (g) by the previous amendment}.

S 2556, Cybersecurity Investment

The Committee considered S 2556, the PROTECT Act. The Committee adopted an amendment in the nature of a substitute. The substitute language:

Adds §219A(c)(2) that adds a prohibition of duplicate recovery to the rate recovery provision; and

Adds §3(a)(2)(E) that adds “an investor-owned electric utility that sells less than 4,000,000 megawatt hours of electricity per year” to the list of entities eligible for the e Rural and Municipal Utility Advanced Cybersecurity Grant and Technical Assistance Program.

S 2714, ARPA-E Reauthorization

The Committee considered S 2714, the ARPA–E Reauthorization Act of 2019. The Committee adopted an amendment. That amendment inserted a new §2(c) and renumbered the subsequent sub-sections. The new subsection amends 42 USC 16538(f). The new language would allow DOE to consider past grant performance during the award of new grants.

Moving Forward

These three bills had significant bipartisan support in Committee, but Lee insisted on being recorded as a Nay vote on each of the bills. This means that he would be likely to raise an objection if the bills were offered for consideration under the Senate’s unanimous consent process. If that were to happen the bills would not be adopted under those provisions and would have to be considered under regular order. None of these bills is important enough to take up the Senate’s time under regular order.

The only other way that these bills could be considered would be as part of a DOE authorization bill.

S 2714 Introduced – ARPA-E Reauthorization

Last week Sen Van Hollen (D,MD) introduced S 2714, the ARPA–E Reauthorization Act of 2019. The bill is very similar to HR 4091 that was adopted in Committee last month.

The Senate version of the bill does not include the radioactive waste addition to the ARPA-E goals (42 USC 16538(c) that was included in the House version, but it did include the broad ‘security’ provision that I discussed in my post about the introduction of HR 4091.

Most of the other changes to §16538 made by this version of the bill are similar to those made in the House version. The spending authorizations are the same as were included in the managers amendment to HR 4091 that was included in the Committee’s approval of that bill.

Moving Forward

Van Hollen is not a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee to which this bill was assigned for consideration. His one cosponsor, Sen Alexander (R,TN), is, however, so it is reasonable to suspect that this bill could be considered in Committee. I would suspect that it would receive the same bipartisan support as was seen in the House for HR 4091.

As I noted earlier today, this bill was included in the list of bills that will be addressed tomorrow in a legislative hearing before the Committee. That does not mean that the bill will automatically be considered in a markup, but it is very likely.

Committee Hearings – Week of 11-3-19

This week just the Senate will be in session; the House is working (campaigning? Or just explaining impeachment?) in their districts. There are two cybersecurity related hearings scheduled; one a markup and one a DOE look at legislation.

Markup Hearing

On Wednesday the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will be holding a business meeting that includes marking up 16 bills (plus 11 postal naming bills and four nominations). Only one of those bills is of interest here:

• HR 1589, the CBRN Intelligence and Information Sharing Act of 2019

The House passed this bill by a voice vote back in April. I would not normally expect the Committee to make any substantive changes to this bill in this type of crowded hearing.

Legislative Hearing

On Wednesday the Energy Subcommittee of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will hold a legislative hearing looking at 11 Department of Energy related bills. There is only one witness scheduled; Daniel Simmons from DOE. Two of those bills are of interest here:

• S 2556 – Protecting Resources On The Electric grid with Cybersecurity Technology Act of 2019

• S 2714 – ARPA-E Reauthorization Act

The language for S 2714 has just become available. I hope to be able to review it in detail before tomorrow’s hearing.

Bills Introduced – 10-28-19

Yesterday with both the House and Senate in session there were 48 bills introduced. Three of those bills may receive future coverage in this blog:

HR 4891 To provide for the conduct of certain water security measures in the Western United States, and for other purposes. Rep. Torres Small, Xochitl [D-NM-2]

S 2714 A bill to amend the America COMPETES Act to reauthorize the ARPA-E program, and for other purposes. Sen. Van Hollen, Chris [D-MD]

S 2718 A bill to provide for the conduct of certain water security measures in the State of New Mexico, and for other purposes. Sen. Udall, Tom [D-NM] 

I suspect that the ‘water security measures’ referenced in HR 4891 and S 2718 are related to ‘supply security’ not physical or cyber security of the water systems.