Review – S 2305 Reported in Senate – Cybersecurity Education Grants

Earlier this month, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee published their report on S 2305, the Cybersecurity Opportunity Act. The Committee met on August 4^th, 2021 to consider the bill. Substitute language was offered and amended before the Committee adopted the new language. The bill would now require at least 50% of  grant funds released under this program to go to “historically Black colleges and universities and minority-serving institutions” and added a five year sunset provision for the grant program. No spending authorization was added to the bill.

The bill is now cleared for consideration by the full Senate. This bill is unlikely to come to the floor under regular order, it is just not politically important enough to consume that type of time. There is a possibility that this bill could be considered under the Senate’s unanimous consent process, but a single Senator could block that consideration. A more likely possibility would be for the bill to be added to some larger, more important bill as part of the amendment process. If the bill were to be considered on its own under regular order, I would expect the bill to receive significant bipartisan support.

For more information about the changes made in the language of this bill, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/s-2305-reported-in-senate - subscription required.