WORLD WIDE WEB — In a letter sent on June 5th to the rocketry community, John Kyte, the NAR/TRA Legislative Liaison provided the following update to the status of S.724:

S. 724, the Enzi bill, was introduced in the full Senate Judiciary Committee today for mark-up and was "held over" upon request by Sen. Herb Kohl (D-WI). Sen. Kohl was an author and sponsor of the Safe Explosives Act, which we are trying to amend.

By holding the bill over, no action was taken today, and the bill is now on the mark-up schedule for next Thursday. Unless a member of the Committee continues to ask that it be held over, it will be "marked-up" next Thursday. Marked-up means that any Committee member can propose changes to the bill, those changes are voted on and, in theory, a final end product is hashed-out that everyone on the Committee, or at least a majority, can support. Unless a bill goes into the process with unanimous or solid majority support, mark-up is generally a process of compromise.

We are working closely with staffers from the offices of Sen. Hatch, Kohl and Enzi, as well as with staffers from Sen. Sessions and Craig, to determine strategy, and discuss possible options and timing. We know that some Members of the Committee, including at least one co-sponsor, have concerns with the bill as introduced. Sen . Enzi will attempt to meet with several of the members of the Judiciary Committee later today as part of the strategy development and we will be apprised of what course of action he intends to take and how he wants us to support him.