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Weekly Legislative Update
Week of August 8, 2016
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Week of August 8th
The House and Senate are in summer recess for four more weeks until Tuesday, September 6.
Expect the standoff over Zika funding and gun control to resume when Congress reconvenes in September. Lawmakers will also have to pass a stopgap appropriations measure by September 30, in order to stave off a shutdown of the federal government.
Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) said he plans to have the House take up a series of six bills to overhaul the criminal justice system when the House returns in September. On September 6, the Senate will resume consideration of the spending
bill
that includes funding for Zika, in addition to the FY 2017 Defense Appropriations bill (
S. 3000
). This fall, Congress will also likely consider
the House-Senate conference report for the "Energy Policy Modernization Act of 2016" (
S. 2012
), the House-Senate conference report for the $602 billion FY 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (
S. 2943
), the 2016 Water Resources Development Act (WRDA), the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade agreement, the Supreme Court nomination of Merrick Garland, and numerous other legislative items before the 114th Congress concludes on Friday, December 16.
Voters in Connecticut, Vermont, Minnesota, and Wisconsin head to the polls for congressional primaries on Tuesday. There are 91 days until Election Day and 48 days until the first presidential debate.
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White House Announces New Guidance Requiring Federal Agencies to Consider Climate Change
On August 2, the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) announced the release of its final guidance for all federal agencies to consider climate change under their National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) reviews. The final guidance will require agencies to describe climate change impacts and advise them on considering alternatives to make the proposed actions and the affected communities more resilient to the effects of climate change, the White House said.
In addition to providing federal agencies with a reasoned approach as to how to describe climate change impacts, the guidance:
- Advises agencies to quantify projected greenhouse gas emissions of proposed federal actions whenever the necessary tools, methodologies, and data inputs are available;
- Encourages agencies to draw on their experience and expertise to determine the appropriate level (broad, programmatic or project- or site-specific) and the extent of quantitative or qualitative analysis required to comply with NEPA;
- Counsels agencies to consider alternatives that would make the action and affected communities more resilient to the effects of a changing climate; and
- Reminds agencies to use existing information and science when assessing proposed actions.
Reps. Ed Whitfield (R-KY) and Pete Olson (R-TX), Chairman and Vice Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power, slammed the White House for requiring federal agencies to consider climate change impacts in their National Environmental Policy Act reviews, saying the decision will hurt businesses. The pair said the approach was not "economically realistic." Read more...
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White House Announces New Public and Private Efforts to Support Integration and Adoption of Unmanned Aircraft Systems
On August 2, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) announced new public and private efforts to support the safe integration and innovative adoption of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) across the United States. These announcements include actions that expand the federal government's capacity to use unmanned aircraft operations to advance agency and department missions and accelerate research discoveries related to airspace integration, state government commitments to support an emerging unmanned aircraft industry, and private actions to enhance mobility, expand participation, and promulgate privacy best practices, including:
- $35 million in research funding by the National Science Foundation (NSF) over the next five years to accelerate the understanding of how to intelligently and effectively design, control, and apply UAS to beneficial applications. This will include areas such as monitoring and inspection of physical infrastructure, smart disaster response, agricultural monitoring, the study of severe storms, and more;
- A broad range of actions by the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) to use UAS to support search and rescue operations, to augment manned aircraft operations, and improve government processes around technological adoption;
- A $5 million down-payment by the state of New York to support the growth of the emerging unmanned aircraft systems industry across New York; and
- A collective commitment made by UAS industry associations to implement a broad educational effort around privacy best practices for users of UAS technology, among other private-sector commitments to support UAS technologies.
Most notably, these announcements expand on the Department of Transportation and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)'s
"Small UAS" rule
announced earlier this summer to provide national guidelines for the operation of non-recreational unmanned aircraft under 55 pounds.
Read more...
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There are no scheduled hearings this week as the House and Senate are in recess.
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