I'm here . . . just wanted to do some research first.
Here's the Senate bill (S. 2307) passed today:
thomas.loc.gov
As you can see, it isn't helpful as far as telling us what we want to know, and it is a multi-billion dollar haystack hiding what we hope is a $100 million appropriation somewhere.
The bill was introduced on July 15, so it has not resulted in hearings, etc., that can be mined for specifics on cargo security. I did not come across anything on this topic on Lexus/Nexus, either.
Please keep in mind that all provisions of Senate bills, even bills passing 90-1, are subject to significant changes in conference with the House, and even if/when we ferret out our little program, we have no assurances of its final form.
I don't think that the state of this legislation will have any effect on the timing of an O'Hare announcement, if one is coming this summer. That's because, as we all remember from last time, there is no law in place until it is signed by the President, and no money can be spent without the law being in place. Even then, if you are dealing with the INS, you can't be sure that they manage to get around to spending the money on time.
This appropriations bill will be law, probably, in September or October, and in no case will it become effective before October 1. So any summer O'Hare announcement would have to be along the lines of "The pilot was successful and the FAA recommends its adoption nationally." No numbers will be available on the national level. You may recall that my best guess, based on an analysis of cargo capacity at O'Hare versus nationally, is on the order of $50 million.
There is another bill I came across while researching this one that is more interesting for us. Next post. |
