This week the House returns from “spring break.” Today and Wednesday the House will consider “suspensions.”
One of the suspension bills of particular interest is HR 4509. This legislation requires states or “high-risk urban areas” receiving Homeland Security funds to establish a state planning committee or an urban area working group, in order to develop and revise homeland security plans and work on threat and hazard identification.
Readers will be interested to know that the committees must have representatives of fusion centers — the wonderful people that consider you and I terrorists — on their board.
This is part of a series of homeland security bills the House will consider on Wednesday. The House will also consider HR 3576, the Border Enforcement Accountability, Oversight, and Community Engagement Act. This act establishes a Department of Homeland Security Border Oversight Commission, comprised of a northern border subcommittee and a southern border subcommittee within the Commission. The Commission is supposed to help improve border polices.
The act also creates an immigration “ombudsman” in the Department of Homeland Security and creates new training and education requirements for border personnel.
Another piece of legislation that the House will consider Wednesday is HR 4482, which requires Homeland Security to assess threats on our southern border and develop a “strategic plan” to deal with those threats.
Among the suspension bills the House will consider Tuesday is HR 1567, the “Global Food Security Act.” This bill “….requires the President to coordinate the development and implementation of a comprehensive strategy to accomplish the objectives of promoting global food security, resilience, and nutrition consistent with national food security investment plans.”
Because the US Government is constitutionally authorized to, and capable of, ending global hunger. Besides we all know government bureaucracies are more efficient at delivering effective care than private businesses, right?
The House will also consider S 2512, which provides for priority FDA review for drugs to treat the Zika virus. This is a good bill, but it does raise the question, is our health really improved by the FDA? (SPOILER ALERT: NO IT IS NOT).
This is an edited version of this update from Campaign for Liberty, reprinted with permission.
