S.Amdt. 1933

SA 1933. Mr. PETERS submitted an amendment intended to be proposed by
him to the bill S. 4049, to authorize appropriations for fiscal year
2021 for military activities of the Department of Defense, for military
construction, and for defense activities of the Department of Energy,
to prescribe military personnel strengths for such fiscal year, and for
other purposes; which was ordered to lie on the table; as follows:

At the appropriate place, insert the following:

SEC. __. NATIONAL BIODEFENSE STRATEGY UPDATES.

(a) Updated Biodefense Threat Assessment.--
(1) In general.--The Secretary of Homeland Security, in
consultation with the Secretary of State, the Secretary of
Defense, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of
Health and Human Services, and the Director of National
Intelligence, shall--
(A) conduct an assessment of current and potential
biological threats against the United States, both naturally
occurring and man-made, either accidental or deliberate,
including the potential for catastrophic biological threats
on the scale of the COVID-19 pandemic or greater;
(B) not later than 6 months after the date of enactment of
this section, submit the findings of the assessment conducted
under subparagraph (A) to the Federal officials described in
subsection (b)(1);
(C) not later than 30 days of the date on which the
assessment is submitted under subparagraph (B), conduct a
briefing for the appropriate congressional committees on the
findings of the assessment;
(D) update the assessment under subparagraph (A) biennially
as appropriate, and provide the findings of such updated
assessments to the Federal officials described in subsection
(b)(1); and
(E) conduct briefings for the appropriate congressional
committees as needed any time an assessment under this
paragraph is updated.
(2) Classification and format.--Assessments under paragraph
(1) shall be submitted in an unclassified format and include
a classified annex.
(b) Updated Implementation Plan for National Biodefense
Strategy.--
(1) In general.--The Secretary of Health and Human
Services, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of
Agriculture, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and all
other Departments and agencies with responsibilities for
biodefense shall jointly--
(A) consider the assessment in subsection (a);
(B) seek input from relevant external stakeholders;
(C) provide an updated comprehensive Implementation Plan
for the National Biodefense Strategy (referred to in this
section as the ``Strategy''), under section 1086 of the
National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017 (6
U.S.C. 104), which shall include--
(i) short-, medium-, and long-term goals and objectives for
executing the Strategy;
(ii) metrics for meeting each objective of the Strategy;
(iii) the specific roles and responsibilities of each
relevant Federal agency in the execution of the Strategy;
(iv) a resource plan to staff, support, and sustain efforts
to execute the Strategy;
(v) guidance on the decision-making process for individual
agency budgets and for identifying and enforcing enterprise-
wide decisions and priorities under the Strategy;
(vi) guidance and methods for analyzing the data collected
from relevant agencies, including ensuring that non-Federal
resources and capabilities are accounted for in analysis
under the Strategy; and
(vii) guidance for identifying biodefense spending
allotments within individual agency budget submissions to the
Office of Management and Budget, aligned with the objectives
in the Strategy; and
(D) not later than 1 year after the date of enactment of
this section, submit such Implementation Plan to the
appropriate congressional committees.
(2) Classification and format.--Assessments under paragraph
(1) shall be submitted in an unclassified format and include
a classified annex.
(c) Portal for Reporting Biodefense Readiness
Information.--
(1) In general.--The Secretary of Health and Human Services
shall--
(A) establish a public-facing website that publishes, and
updates on a monthly basis--
(i) each objective in the Strategy;
(ii) the specific Federal agencies responsible for meeting
each objective;
(iii) the metrics for each objective; and
(iv) the previous efforts and current status of efforts to
meet each objective, using, at a minimum, the metric
described in clause (iii), and including whether or not the
objective has been achieved; and
(B) annually submit to the appropriate congressional
committees a report detailing the implementation status of
the Strategy.
(2) Publication of progress.--Each agency with
responsibilities within the Strategy shall routinely submit
their progress on meeting each objective described in
paragraph (1) to the Secretary of Health and Human Services
to be published on the website.
(d) Definition.--In this section, the term ``appropriate
congressional committees'' means those committees described
in section

[[Page S3415]]

1086(f) of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal
Year 2017 (6 U.S.C. 104(f)).
______