Senate Passes Cloture Motion on Lieberman-Collins Cyber Bill

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The cloture vote represents Senators’ willingness to continue the process; members will be working hard to cut enough deals to win final passage. Morgan Meguire anticipates numerous amendments, and it remains to be seen whether the final product will pass.

The many contacts that Senators received from all parts of the entire electric sector, including members of the NEPPA legislative committee, have increased attention to the problems the bill creates – in terms of giving FERC expanded authority to adopt standards directly, by-passing the current FERC-NERC process.

Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has said he will accept amendments, but has not reached a final agreement with Senate Republicans on the timing and number of amendments. We expect debate on the bill to spill over into next week, and – with the pending month-long August recess – possibly into September. There are very fluid discussions among supporters of the Lieberman-Collins bill, the Republican alternative known as the "SECURE IT" bill (S. 3342), and a yet-to-be-seen compromise being drafted by Sens. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), and others.

The electric sector cyber coalition is drafting amendments to fix the problems in Lieberman-Collins and the "SECURE IT" acts.

In a related development, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce warned in a July 25 letter that the group may include the vote in their annual legislative scorecard, should Senators support the current version of the Lieberman-Collins bill. Despite the sponsors' claims to the contrary, the Chamber, one of the staunchest opponents of the original bill and a supporter of the "SECURE IT" act, said it still "strongly opposes" the legislation and argued that the standards are not truly voluntary.

The same day, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) wrote to Senate leadership to again express their support for "SECURE IT" and say that they have "serious concerns" with the Lieberman bill because it "does not allow manufacturers to share information among themselves and also receive liability protection." NAM also said that the creation of "a new government-administered program in an agency yet-to-be-named forces unnecessary regulatory uncertainty on the private sector, creates a system that allows for new, overly prescriptive regulations, and is a disincentive to share information."

On July 26, the White House formally backed the Lieberman-Collins measure through a Statement of Administrative Procedure – but suggested the President would not back a bill that reduced the critical infrastructure provisions, pulled back the government's current work in cyber security or weakened "the statutory authorities of the Department of Homeland Security to accomplish its critical infrastructure protection mission."

To read the complete legislative update including the following topics, click here.

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