Review - HR 8774 Reported in House – FY 2025 DOD Spending

Last week the House Appropriations Committee published their report for HR 8774, the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2025 and the reported version of the text of the bill. There are limited mentions of cybersecurity in the bill (none of interest here) and no mentions of chemical issues beyond continued spending for the destruction of chemical munitions. There are discussions of both topics in the Report.

The House Rules Committee is scheduled to meet on Tuesday to formulate the rule for the consideration of three spending bills, including HR 8774. There have been 401 amendments submitted to the Rules Committee to date for consideration in the debate on the DHS spending bill; three cybersecurity amendments of possible interest here. The bill is scheduled to be considered by the Full House this coming week.

Moving Forward

This is another partisan spending bill that will receive little or no support from Democrats. The Republicans will have to pass the rule for the consideration of this bill in the House Rules Committee and then maintain party discipline on the floor for the legislation to pass.

As with all spending bills, the language of this bill will never make it in the Senate. Even when the two bodies are ideologically closer, the Senate will consider their own version of the bill (not yet crafted by the Senate Appropriations Committee) as substitute language for HR 8774. Theoretically, a conference committee will work out the differences between the two versions of the bill. What is more likely is that in the last week of September, a continuing resolution will keep the current spending levels for sometime into the future. The big question is how far into the future, and who will write the final bill, it could be next year with a Republican Congress and a Trump Administration. If the Democrats win in November, it will be a lame duck congress that writes the bill in December.

 

For more details about the provisions of this bill, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/hr-8774-reported - subscription required.