Review - S 2625 Introduced – FY 2024 DHS Spending

Back in July, Sen Murphy (D,CT) introduced S 2625, the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2024. The Senate Appropriations Committee published their Report on the bill. Beyond the funding for CISA there is no mention of cybersecurity in the bill, but there are a multitude of discussions of cybersecurity in the Report. Interestingly, the bill fully funds the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) program, though it is only explained in the Report.

The House passed their version of the bill (HR 4367) on September 27^th, 2023 on a near party-line vote.

Moving Forward

Typically, the Senate takes up the House version of spending bills and then substitutes language from the Senate version of the bill as the first amendment considered. That is not going to happen this year with the DHS spending bill as the House (in §15 of H Res 723) prohibited the Clerk from notifying the Senate that HR 4367 had passed in the House until HR 2 (the House Republican signature border security bill) was enacted into law. Since the Democratic controlled Senate is not going to take up HR 2 and President Biden would not sign it if it were passed, the Senate will not be able to take action on HR 4367.

The easy way forward for the Senate would be to include the language from this bill along with their language for another spending bill (probably the DOD spending bill) when it considers that legislation. In any case, if the Senate does take up that bill (an open question if the confusion in the House continues for too long, imperiling the passage of spending bills by November 17^th), it will ultimately pass a version significantly different that the language in House version. A conference committee will then be formed to negotiate a version that could theoretically pass in both houses. We still have to see if there is language, this year, that could pass in both the House and Senate.

 

For more information on the provisions of this bill, including details on cybersecurity and CFATS spending – see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/s-2625-introduced - subscription required.