New Rules Committee Hearing for HR 7776 NDAA Amendment

The House Rules Committee has just announced that they will resume their hearing on HR 7776 which is being used as the vehicle for the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act tomorrow morning at 11:30 am. While the hearing was initially scheduled to be held yesterday, the Armed Services Committees (both Senate and House) leadership had not yet finished their negotiations on the substitute language that will be offered for HR 7776. That final version of the substitute language was just post to the House Rules Committee web site.

HR 7776 is currently the Water Resources Development Act of 2022. It was originally passed in the House on June 8^th, 2022. The Senate amended the bill and then passed the revised version on July 28^th, 2022. In both cases there was strong bipartisan support for the version adopted.

A temporary change in House Rules was passed earlier today allowing for floor consideration of bills on the same day that a rule was approved for that consideration in the Rules Committee. This is a relatively standard end of year move to allow quick consideration of must pass bills like the NDAA.

I will be doing a more detailed look at the NDAA language, but a quick scan of the Table of Contents of the proposed language shows that the bill would include

• NDAA language (Divisions A thru E),

• Intel Authorization Act (Division F),

• Homeland Security language (Division G),

• Water Resources (probably the Senate passed language from HR 7776) (Division H),

• 2023 Coast Guard Authorization Act (Division K)