Review - S 2443 Introduced – FY 2024 EWR Spending

Back in July, the late Sen Feinstein introduced S 2443, the Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies (EWR) Appropriations Act, 2024. The Senate Appropriations Committee published their Report on the bill. The bill contains two entries related to cybersecurity and the Report includes a number of discussions about cybersecurity related matters.

Moving Forward

While the House passed HR 4394 with significantly different language (and most spending numbers), the Senate does not typically try to amend the House language piecemeal. Instead, the Appropriations Committee offers the language from their version of the bill as a substitute language for the bill, and the Senate amends it from there. Once, (if) the revised bill is passed in the Senate, then it goes to a conference committee to work out the differences. The final version of the bill goes back to the House and Senate for an up or down vote, and then to the President for signature.

That is what is supposed to happen. The Republican lead House has been much more partisan in their crafting of spending bills, making no pretense of looking for bipartisan support. The Democratic lead Senate has attempted to craft their versions with more focus on bipartisanship, but so far, moving spending bills through the process in the Senate has been much more difficult than normal with a handful of Republicans trying to force votes on extremely partisan amendments.

With HR 4366 still wending its way through the legislative process in the Senate, it is not yet clear that the body can pass a spending bill. To make matters worse, the House representatives on any conference committee have little incentive to try to work out a bipartisan version of the bill with their Senate counterparts, as any such compromise will be seen as an abject surrender by a significant portion of the Republican conference.

At this point, I am not sure that there is a way for funding bills to make it through the process to reach the President’s desk.

 

For more details about the cybersecurity provisions of the legislation – see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/s-2443-introduced - subscription required.