Review - HR 3855 Introduced – Digital Reserve Corps

Last month, Rep Gonzales (R,TX) introduced HR 3855, the National Digital Reserve Corps Act. The bill would establish within the General Services Administration (GSA) a ‘National Digital Reserve Corps’, to help address the digital and cybersecurity needs of Executive agencies. The bill would add a new Chapter 104 to 5 USC. HR 3555 would authorize $30 million for this new program. This bill is very similar to HR 162 (that post has been removed from the paywall) which Gonzales introduced in January, no action has been taken on that bill.

Moving Forward

Neither Gonzales, nor his six cosponsors are members of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee to which this bill was assigned for primary consideration. This means that it is unlikely that there is sufficient influence to see the bill considered in Committee. Two of the cosponsors {Rep Carbajal (D,CA) and Rep Davis (D,NC)} are members of the House Armed Services Committee to which this bill was assigned for secondary consideration. Thus, there is a better possibility that the bill could be considered there. Unfortunately, to move the House floor a bill generally needs to be reported favorably by the committee of primary assignment.

I suspect that there would be bipartisan support for this bill, but this is not a good year for proposing a new federal spending program in the House. The House leadership is focused on cutting spending so new programs have a number of additional hurdles to overcome. Without strong support in the Oversight Committee, this bill is not going to go anywhere.

 

For more details about the provisions of this bill, including an analysis of differences between it and HR 162, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/hr-3855-introduced - subscription required.