Legislation has not yet been submitted, as far as I know. NIST has held
public meetings on the proposed wording and at those industry has
strongly supported it. A few key lobbyists have made it apparent,
however, that they would fight to oppose it. NIST has been working on
getting legislators and industry spokesmen on board prior to submitting
the legislation--greasing the skids, you might say. Strategically, one
would not want to throw the amendment out on the floor until conditions
look favorable; otherwise a fatal blow might be dealt to it and changing
the FPLA would be greatly delayed. I hope that NIST forgives me for
speaking for them on this and that I have put it correctly.
This matter is not unrelated to the European Union's directive that has
been extended three times already and currently bans non-metric markings
after 2009 Dec 31 on products and ancillary documents brought into or
produced in the EU. Contemporaneous to the work being done to amend the
FPLA in the U.S., groups have been working in the EU to amend this
directive to remove the scheduled ban on non-metric indications.
A lot of folks have been quite busy in a lot of back hallways and closed
meeting rooms! It would be dangerous to assert that these two amendment
movements are firmly tied to each other but it would be foolish to say
that they are unrelated. Industry is the common player on both fields.
In short, I have seen (at two of those NIST conferences) the proposed
FPLA amendment and so far I have not heard that it has been submitted
for congressional action. I suspect at this point that this will not
happen until after the 2008 elections. However, now that Gen. Petraeus
has given his testimony and the Democratic Party is turning its
attention back to other internal issues, there yet might be a window in
the last session of this Congress to get it through. I'm not close
enough to the ballgame to call the plays, though.
Jim
Mike Millet wrote:
I like your reply James but have we really heard of any person actually
submitting legislation to amend the FPLA? I was under the impression
that that hasn't been proposed or even thought about in Congress yet.
Hopefully it does though.
