House Passes S 1605 – FY 2022 NDAA

Last night the House passed S 1605, the FY 2022 National Defense Authorization Act by a bipartisan vote of 363 to 70. As I predicted the Nay vote was also bipartisan; 51 Democrats and 19 Republicans. The Senate may not take this bill up this week, though a weekend session is not out of the question.

The bill does contain several cybersecurity provisions (subscription required), but not a cyberattack reporting requirement.

Senate bomb throwers {most recently Sen Rubio (R,FL)} should note that while Senate rules generally allow them to hold-up legislation to get votes on their pet amendments, they cannot push that too far since the rules can be manipulated to bypass them if the bill is important enough and has wide enough support.

It also appears that the leadership took a mild swipe at Sen Scott (R,FL) because of his delay in negotiating the inclusion of the cyberattack reporting requirement (see this article). The original S 1605 was a bill sponsored by Scott. The language of the original bill could have been included in the substitute language, but it was kept out.