Review - S 2605 Introduced – FY 2024 IER Spending

Back in July, Sen Merkley (D,OR) introduced S 2605, the Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies (IER) Appropriations Act, 2024. The Senate Appropriations Committee published their Report on the bill. Like the House bill (HR 4821), the two cybersecurity mentions in the bill are buried in other funding, and there are two cybersecurity mentions in the Report. CSB funding is increased. And the Report includes two chemical safety discussions of note.

Moving Forward

The Senate typically waits for the House to pass a spending bill and then begins its consideration of that bill by substituting language from their version of the spending bill. This year the Senate has tried a new tact by taking a single passed House bill (HR 4366) and adding Senate language from two other spending bills. This has the benefit of speeding up the consideration of spending bills. That could be important as the November 17^th deadline for spending bills approaches.

But spending bill process problems still exist. See my post “Coming FY 2024 Spending Bill Logjams”.

 

For more details about the provisions in the bill and the discussions in the Report, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/s-2605-introduced - subscription required.