House Accepts Senate Amendment to HR 7147 – FY 2026 DHS Spending

This afternoon the House took up, yet again, HR 7147, the Further Additional Continuing Appropriations Act, 2026, dealing with the FY 2026 funding for DHS. They effectively withdrew their amended version that had been approved on March 27th, 2026, by a near party-line vote. Instead, the House voted (voice vote) to accept the Senate amendment of March 26th (actual Senate vote took place early on the 27th) that funded the Department except for the immigration enforcement activities of ICE and CBP. The bill now goes to the President for signing, probably this evening. 

While voice votes typically mean that there is widespread support (or at least minimal opposition) for legislation, that may not really be the case here. As with the Senate’s early morning vote there were only a limited number of members on the floor (see reporting here by the Washington Post) when the voice vote was held. This may have been done (in both the House and Senate) to provide cover to Republican members that were conflicted by their opposition to the lack of ICE/CBP funding and their desire to support the President. ICE and CBP continue to receive funding from the earlier Big Beautiful Bill and potentially a second reconciliation bill that the President has requested to be on his desk by June 1st. 

House Reamended and Repassed HR 7147 – FY 2026 DHS Spending

Friday, after receiving the amended version of HR 7147, the FY 2026 DHS spending bill, from the Senate, the House took up H Res 1142 - Providing for disposition of the Senate amendment to the bill (H.R. 7147) making further consolidated appropriations for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2026, and for other purposes. That resolution was very short:

“Resolved, That upon adoption of this resolution, the House shall be considered to have taken from the Speaker's table the bill (H.R. 7147) making further consolidated appropriations for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2026, and for other purposes, with the Senate amendment thereto, and to have concurred in the Senate amendment with an amendment consisting of the text of Rules Committee Print 119–21.”

The resulting House amended version of HR 7147, would extend the lapsed continuing resolution (PL 119-37) through May 22nd, 2026.

After almost two hours of debate the House approved H Res 1142 by a near party-line vote of 213 to 203. Three Democrats and one Independent voted with the Republicans on the resolution. The further amended version of HR 7147 now goes back to the Senate.

The Senate is not scheduled to return to Washington until April 13^th, 2026. In my opinion, there is not much chance that the Senate will agree to the House amendment. It will be interesting to see if they ask the House to go to conference on the bill.

HR 7147 Amended and Passed in Senate – FY 2026 DHS Spending

Late Thursday night (actually 2:17 am Friday) the Senate bypassed all of the previous attempts to close debate on proceeding to consideration of HR 7147, the FY 2026 DHS spending bill, and began consideration of the bill (pg S1660) under unanimous consent. The Senate took up Thune amendment SA 4790, which was substitute language that removed the section dealing with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), thus removing funding for that agency from the bill. The amended language and then the amended bill were then adopted by voice vote. Of course, ICE has continued functioning and paying their personnel during the DHS shutdown from monies authorized by the “Big Beautiful Bill”.

Passed by ‘voice vote’ is normally an indication of broad, bipartisan support, as would the consideration of the measure under unanimous consent. But, this bill was ‘considered’ late at night and reporting by Andrew Desiderio of Punchbowl.news noted that there were only five Senators present on the Senate floor when the vote was cast; Sen Thune (R,SD), Sen Schmidt (R,MO), Sen Moreno (R,OH; presiding), Sen Schatz (D,HI), and Sen Kim (D,NJ). So, while there was technically bipartisan support for the measure, there are legitimate questions about how widespread that support extended in both parties.

More on subsequent action in the House in a separate post.

HR 8029 Passed in House – FY 2026 DHS Spending

This afternoon the House considered HR 8029, the Pay Our Homeland Defenders Act, under a closed rule. After an hour and 20 minutes of debate, the House passed the bill by a near party line vote of 218 to 206. Four Democrats and one Independent vote Aye. The bill now goes to the Senate where it will suffer the same problems as HR 7147, the nearly identical bill that was passed in the House on January 22^nd, 2026, but has not been able to gain the 60 votes needed for passage in the Senate.

HR 8029 Introduced – FY 2026 DHS Spending

Last week Rep Ciscomani (R,AZ) introduced HR 8029, the Pay Our Homeland Defenders Act. This bill would provide for spending for the Department of Homeland Security through September 30^th, 2026. For the most part this bill is the same as HR 7147, the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2026, that is still being ‘considered’ in the Senate.

One provision from HR 7147 is not found in this new bill, §554, Repeal of Senate Notification Requirements Relating to Legal Process on Disclosures of Senate Data. The same provision was included in HR 7148 {§105, Division H}, the last FY 2026 minibus spending bill that was passed in February.

HR 8029 includes the actual text of the spending bill as Division A of the bill. Division B, Further Additional Continuing Appropriations Act, 2026, addresses the period of no funding since February 13^th, 2026. It provides the legal language authorizing back pay for DHS employees, and other obligations made by the Department during that period.

The House Rules Committee is scheduled to meet tomorrow to formulate the rule for the consideration of this bill.

Senate to Begin Consideration of HR 7147, FY 2026 DHS Spending

Yesterday the Senate began the process to consider HR 7147, the FY 2026 DHS spending bill. There is, as of yet, no agreement on what sort of amendments may be considered, so it is unlikely that the first cloture vote (scheduled for tomorrow) that would close debate on the question of proceeding to consider the bill will pass. The current funding CR for DHS expires on Friday. DHS is the only department of the Federal government that does not have funding in place through the end of FY 2026.

Negotiations are continuing (?) behind the scenes so some sort of agreement to keep DHS open past Friday midnight still exists. The Senate is currently expected to be out of Washington next week, but that may change if there exists a reasonable expectation that an agreement could be reached.

House to Consider HR 8774 – FY 2025 DOD Spending

The House is scheduled to begin consideration of HR 8774, the FY 2025 DOD spending bill, today. It will be considered under the same rule (H Res 1316) that was approved yesterday for the consideration of HR 8752 (DHS spending) and HR 8771 (State Dept spending). That rule provides for the consideration of 193 potential amendments, more than were allotted for the other two bills combined.

Those amendments include all three of the ones that I briefly mentioned on Monday. They are:

70. James (R,MI): Offsets $12 million from Defense-Wide Operations and Management for Defense-Wide RDTE, Cyber Security Research for establishing a Connected Vehicle Cybersecurity Center. (10 minutes)

158. Strong (R,AL), Sewell (AL): Increases Army RDT&E (H. Rept. 118-557: Line 16, Air and Missile Defense Technology, PE 0602150A) by $5,000,000 for Automated Software Weakness and Vulnerability Discovery for Binary Code. (10 minutes)

191. Wilson (R,SC), Kiggans (VA): Increases and decreases defense-wide RDT&E by $6,000,000 for Cyber Talent & Curriculum Development/ Platform & Critical Infrastructure Defense Cybersecurity Research. (10 minutes)

There are more relatively non-controversial amendments to be considered with the DOD bill; many increasing spending that would affect jobs in the sponsor’s district. I would expect to see more of these amendments being considered during en bloc considerations.

Interestingly, the DHS spending bill is not listed on today’s schedule for consideration. It could still finish up tomorrow morning before they complete work on the DOD spending bill.

Rule for Consideration of HR 8752 – FY 2025 DHS Spending

Last night, the House Rules Committee finished their consideration of three spending bills (HR 8774, DOD spending; HR 8752, DHS spending; and HR 8771, State Department spending). They crafted a single rule (H Res 1316) for the consideration of the three bills. This is a structured rule with limited debate and a limited number of amendments that can be considered on the floor.

For HR 8752, the rule provides for potential consideration of only 61 amendments (listed in H Rept 118-559, pgs 32-6) out of the 252 amendments that had been submitted to the Rules Committee. Neither of the two amendments that I had discussed as being of potential interest here were included in the 61. Specifically, Garbarino’s CFATS spending amendment was not included in the list to be considered. So there will be no provisions in this bill that will ‘save’ the CFATS program. 

As was done last year with HR 4367 (FY 2024 DHS spending), the Rule contains the following provision:

“31. Provides that the Clerk shall not transmit to the Senate a message that the House has passed H.R. 8752 until notified by the Speaker that H.R. 2, as passed by the House on May 11, 2023, has been enacted into law.”

HR 2 is the Republican signature border security bill. Since the Democratically controlled Senate is not going to consider HR 2, this means that there will be no mechanism for the Senate to consider HR 8752. As we saw last year, the Senate, in considering one of the other spending bills can just include language from their version of the DHS spending bill (not yet crafted) as part of the substitute language for that other spending bill. And besides that, we are almost certainly going to see some sort of omnibus or minibus spending bill later this year or next instead of passing 12 spending bills, so this provision is grandstanding on the part of the House leadership.

The House will take up H Res 1316 today. While that resolution lists the three spending bills in DOD, State, and DHS order, that does not mean that that will be the order in which the bills are considered. It is even possible (it was done last year) that they could consider some of the amendments in each bill and then come back and finish up each bill later. The only thing we know about the plan at this point is that the House Leadership plans to finish up votes by 3:00 pm (EDT) on Friday.

Review - HR 8572 Reported in House – FY 2025 DHS Spending Bill

Last week, the House Appropriations Committee published their report for HR 8572, the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2025 and the text of the reported version of the bill. There is on specific cybersecurity language or chemical security language in the bill. The report contains discussions about both, but no mention of the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) program.

The House Rules Committee is scheduled to meet on Tuesday to formulate the rule for the consideration of three spending bills, including HR 8572. There have been 232 amendments submitted to the Rules Committee to date for consideration in the debate on the DHS spending bill; two of possible interest here. One is a CFATS amendment that does not extend the program. The second is a cybersecurity amendment to increase funding for research on preventing cyberattacks. The bill is scheduled to be considered by the Full House this coming week.

Spending Bill Items of Interest

As I noted above, there is no language related to chemical security or cybersecurity in the bill itself. I have extracted some of the spending numbers that may be of interest here, along with comparisons to the version of the FY 2024 spending bill reported in the House last year. This allows for a look at how the Appropriations Committee has changed their DHS outlook over time.

Moving Forward

It is clear from the ‘Minority Views’ portion (pgs 173-5) of the Committee Report that HR 8752 as written and reported is a very partisan bill. If it passes it will be by a narrow, nearly party-line vote. Thus, it will have to be considered under a rule to be crafted by the Rules Committee, what is not yet clear is if it is partisan enough to get at least two of the three radical Republican votes in that Committee and avoids Republican votes against the rule on Wednesday.

 

For more details about chemical security and cybersecurity discussions in the Report, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/hr-8572-reported-in-house - subscription required.

CRS Reports – Week of 4-27-24 – FY 2024 DHS Spending

This week the Congressional Research Service (CRS) published a report on “Comparing DHS Component Funding, FY2024: In Brief”. This report provides a high-level overview of the FY 2024 spending for the component agencies of the Department of Homeland Security, with some comparison to FY 2023 spending.

Information at this level is mainly of interest to policy wonks. There is one interesting graphic in the report though (pg 11, see below). It shows the comparative budgetary authority of DHS components discussed in the report. The agency with the smallest funding is CISA.

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.

Review - HR 4367 Introduced – FY 2024 DHS Spending

Earlier this week, Rep Joyce (R,OH) introduced HR 4367, the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2024. The House Appropriations Committee also published their Report on the bill. The bill includes a relatively modest ($19 million) increase in spending for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). While chemical security is not mentioned in the bill, there are a number of chemical security, cybersecurity, cyber workforce, and counter-UAS provisions outlined in the Committee Report.

Chemical Security

There are no discussions about chemical security issues in the bill or the report. There is a single line entry in the funding tables on page 170 of the report under Infrastructure Security. It shows that the Committee is funding ‘Chemical Security’ (including the CFATS program) at $37.949 million for FY 2024. That is $3.26 million less that FY 2023 and $3.3 million less than the President requested. The Appropriations Committee clearly expects the CFATS program to continue through FY 2024.

CISA Spending

Starting on page 41, the bill outlines the FY 2024 spending for CISA. The bill would provide $2.37 billion for the Agency. According to the Report (pg 4) this is $19.2 above the FY 2023 spending. The Committee noted that:

“Recognizing that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) budget has grown 44 percent over the last three fiscal years, the bill provides $2,926,291,000 to sustain investments in securing federal civilian cyber networks and helping state and local governments and the private sector secure both cyber and physical infrastructure. The amount is $19,153,000 above the fiscal year 2023 enacted level. This strategic pause in significant budget growth provides CISA the opportunity to mature its operations commensurate with the enacted level.”

Moving Forward

This, as with all spending bills, is a bill that has not been passed in the House for some time. In recent years disagreements over immigration and border issues have even stopped the Committee from attempting to publish/report a DHS spending bill. The Republican leadership has included their solutions this year over the opposition of the minority. The Minority Views section (pg 190) of the report outlines their problems with those solutions. What this means for the bill is that it may pass in the House, but it will be strictly on a party-line vote. That is, of course, if the Republican 11 are satisfied in the level of spending cuts included in the bill.

There is little in this bill that will pass mustard with the Democrats in the Senate. Their version of the bill will look a lot different. When the Senate takes up HR 4367 (if, a really big ‘if’, the House actually passes it) they will substitute language from the version being developed by the Senate Appropriations Committee. That version (much amended to appease at least 10 Republicans) may pass on a slightly bipartisan basis. Then a conference committee will work out the differences and maybe McCarthy will work a deal with Democrats to pass the bill in opposition to the right wing of his Party.

There are way too many ‘if’s’, ‘maybe’s’, and ‘may’s’ and other qualifiers in that description. I will not be surprised if this bill never makes it to the President’s desk.

 

For more details about the provisions of the bill, including funding changes and policy discussions, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/hr-4367-introduced - subscription required.

Draft Report for FY 2024 DHS Spending bill

Today, the House Appropriations Committee provided committee mark versions of both its FY 2024 DHS spending bill and the report to accompany that bill. As I mentioned earlier these two draft documents will be marked up by the full Committee tomorrow, along with similar documents for the Legislative Branch spending bill. I will wait for the final version for a complete review, but I do want to look at a few items from the Report for the CISA appropriations.

First off, CISA would be getting a small ($19 million) net increase over FY 2023 spending but a decrease ($130 million) from what was requested by the Administration.

There are a bunch of cybersecurity instructions for CISA in the report. I will cover those in detail in a later post.

There is no mention of chemical security or the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) program in the report. This is not terribly unusual, the CFATS program is too small to receive detailed mention unless there are problems with the program that have come to the attention of the Appropriations Committee. Having said that, with the CFATS sunset date (July 27^th, 2023) quickly approaching, I was hoping to see some mention of either the CFATS program or the ammonium nitrate regulations in the Report as kind of a morale boost for the Office of Chemical Security or the regulated community. May still see something added tomorrow (but probably not).

Committee Hearings – Week of 5-21-23

This week, with just the House in Washington, there is a full slate of hearings scheduled. In this space, an oversight hearing on the NTIA and a markup of the DHS spending bill are of potential interest.

NTIA Oversight

On Tuesday, the Communications and Technology Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee will hold a hearing on “Oversight and Reauthorization of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration”. No witness list is currently available, but it will almost certainly include the NTIA Director. The hearing notice lists 18 pieces of legislation (only two of which have been introduced to date) upon which the hearing will focus. Legislation of potential interest here (links to committee drafts) are:

HR___, the National Telecommunication and Information Administration Reauthorization Act

of 2023,

H Res___, To express the sense of Congress with respect to WHOIS information accessibility, and for other purposes,

HR___, the Digital Economy Cybersecurity Advisory Act of 2023, and

HR___, the Artificial Intelligence Accountability Act.

DHS Spending Bill

On Wednesday, the House Appropriations Committee will hold a markup hearing on “Fiscal Year 2024 Homeland Security and Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Bills”. No word is publicly available on what changes may have been made last week by the DHS Subcommittee to the Committee Draft.

On the Floor

The House has a fairly lite schedule this week, with nothing of particular note here. Interesting that there is not a note on the bottom of the schedule about a potential vote on a budget ceiling bill. With a June 1^st deadline for action, the House would need to complete action this week since they are not scheduled to be in Washington next week.

No CFATS Mention in Draft DHS Spending Bill

Yesterday, the page announcing the Subcommittee markup of the FY2024 DHS spending bill today added a link to a Subcommittee Mark of the bill. I just did a quick skim of the bill, and while there are a number of Republican priorities included in the bill, there is no mention of the Chemical Facilities Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) program. Typically, this program is much too small to be specifically mentioned in the bill, but I was hoping for some language extending the currently pending expiration of the authority for the program. The program currently expires on July 27^th, 2023.

No word yet on what changes were made today.

Review - HR 8257 Introduced – FY 2023 DHS Spending

Last week, Rep Roybal-Allard (D,CA) introduced HR 8257, the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2023. The House Appropriations Committee published their Report on the bill. The bill provides general spending levels for CISA. The Committee Report provides more details about the spending for programs within CISA and cybersecurity directives for the Agency.

Moving Forward

Again, as with the earlier spending bills that I have discussed this month, this spending bill is likely to be taken up by the House before their summer break (currently scheduled to start August 1st). There will be a large number of amendments submitted and many will be adopted on the floor. The bill will almost certainly pass on a near party-line vote. And it will not be taken up by the Senate. Again, when the FY 2023 spending bill is finally passed in December, the conference report will make this report applicable to that bill.

Rinse and repeat….

 

For more details about the DHS spending provisions of this bill, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/hr-8257-introduced - subscription required.

Spending Bill Hearings Added

This morning, shortly after I published my post on Committee Hearings for this week, the House Appropriations Committee announced two additional spending bill hearings:

Wednesday – DOD – House – Defense Subcommittee, and

Thursday – DHS – House – Homeland Security Subcommittee

Review - HR 2471, Division F – CISA Provisions – FY 2022 Spending

Division F of HR 2471, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2022, is the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2022. As with most annual spending bills, the language is very formulaic and changes little (other than the actual financial numbers) from year to year. The meat of the spending bill is found in the Joint Explanatory Statement (JES) provided by the negotiators (essentially a conference committee) of the final language of the bill. The JES for Division F can be found here. The JES also reaffirms the provisions of the House Appropriations Committee report on HR 4431, the DHS spending bill introduced earlier this year.

The table below shows the spending for CISA in FY 2022. The ‘FY 2021’ numbers are the final approved numbers for last year. The ‘HR 4431’ numbers were those proposed in the standalone House spending bill. And the ‘Division F’ are those included in the final HR 2471 spending bill

($ in thousands)	FY 2021	HR 4431	Division F
CISA Total	$2,024,976	$2,422,348	$2,593,656
Operations	$1,662,066	$1,927,750	$1,992,527
Procurement, Construction	$353,479	$467,167	$590,698
Research and Development	$9,431	$7,431	$10,431

In addition to providing more details about the spending allocations, the JES provides additional congressional reporting requirements over those found in the Committee Report on HR 4431 and one new program is outlined.

For more details about the spending increase allocations and the reporting requirements for Division F, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/hr-2471-division-f-cisa-provisions - subscription required.

Review - HR 4431 Introduced – FY 2022 DHS Spending

Last month Rep Roybal-Allard (D,CA) introduced HR 4431, the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2022. As is typical with spending bills, the bill introduced is the version reported by the House Appropriations Committee, so the Committee Report is available. There is little in the bill dealing with cyber (beyond CISA funding, of course), but the Report contains important cybersecurity language.

CISA Spending

The table below shows the overview of CISA spending included in the bill, the data is taken from the Report.

	FY 2021 Funded	FY 2022 Budget	FY 2022 Bill
CISA Total	$2,024,976,000	$2,133,630,000	$2,422,348,000
Operations	$1,662,066,000	$1,691,520,000	$1,927,750,000
Procurement, Const	$353,479,000	$418,179,000	$467,167,000
Research and Development	$9,431,000	$3,931,000	$7,431,000
Cyber Response and Recovery Fund		$20,000,000	$20,000,000

The spending for cybersecurity would certainly be increased by this bill. I suspect that we may see further increases before an FY 2022 spending bill makes it to the President’s desk.

Cyber Provisions that Mimic Proposed Legislation

In the Report, the Appropriations Committee recognizes initiatives by the Administration that mimic a variety of bills that are wending their way through the legislative process. This is not an unusual process, as long as Congress is willing to provide the funds, the executive branch has a lot of leeway to standup various programs without specific legislative approval. If the programs are successful (for various meanings of that term) then Congress will, sooner or later, get around to authorizing the program.

Moving Forward

Based upon recent history, this bill is unlikely to be considered by the House as a standalone measure. Significant portions will be included in the inevitable omnibus spending bill that will probably pass later this year. Because of their control of the purse, the mandates from the Report will continue in force.

For more details on the programs and spending in this bill, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/hr-4431-introduced - subscription required.

HR 7617 Reported in House – FY2021 DOD Spending

Earlier this month the House Appropriations Committee published their marked-up version of HR 7617, the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2021, and their Report on the bill. There is only one specific cyber mention in the bill, but there are a number of mentions of cyber related topics in the report; none specifically addressing control system security issues.

Cyber in HR 7617

While cyber operations are becoming a bigger part of overall military operations there is only one mention of the term ‘cyber’ in HR 7617. In §8125(a)(7) ‘Defensive Cyber Operations Army’ are mentioned as a potential target for funding for software development funds under the Research, Development, Test and Evaluation spending authorization.

Cyber Training

Various training initiatives are addressed in the Committee Report. Most of the mentions include a requirement to report back to the Committee on the progress of the related program. These mentions include:

• Pgs 10-11 - Civilian cyber workforce,

• Pg 32 - Cybersecurity professionals,

• Pg 320 - Cyber education collaboratives, and

• Pg 322 - Women and minorities in stem pipeline.

There are three rather vanilla mentions of cybersecurity processes in the Report. They include:

• Pg 113 - Standards and protocols on countering cybersecurity incidents,

• Pg 113 - Zero trust architecture, and

• Pg 318 - Distributed ledger technology research and development.

There is only one place in the Report where specific funding is mentioned in relation to cybersecurity processes, on page 325, under Arsenal Security. It states:

“The Committee believes that maintaining security, including threats from cyber-attacks, data piracy, and other technological risks, of Department of Defense arsenals is essential. The Committee directs that of the funds included under Industrial Operations, $3,500,000 is to implement efforts to combat these types of threats.”

Moving Forward

This bill will be used as the base for the second minibus spending bill in the House. The House Rules Committee will meet on Tuesday to set the rule for the consideration of the bill on the floor of the House, to include a list of which amendments will be authorized to be submitted from the floor. There have been 110 amendments for this portion of the bill submitted to the Rules Committee.

At this point it is not yet clear that the Democrats have the votes to pass the second minibus. They certainly have a majority in the House, but it is potential ‘no votes’ from the progressive wing of the party that could disable this bill. The problem is not the DOD portion of the bill, but rather a failure to ‘adequately sanction’ ICS and CBP in the DHS portion of the bill that would be the reason for the ‘Nays’.

The Rules Committee meeting has already been delayed one-day to add time to resolve this issue. Pelosi is aware that the Party needs support of the recently elected moderates that allowed the Democrats to take control of the House, so the DHS provisions cannot be too extreme. The Progressives, on the other hand, need to have strong punitive measures in the bill to appease their supporters.

The easy solution is to follow the example of last year, leave the DHS spending bill on the Committee floor and not consider it on the floor of the House. The resolution would then be left to the conference committee that would essentially craft a compromise spending omnibus spending bill before year end. And yes, an omnibus bill is almost a foregone conclusion; the Senate has not yet even been able to craft a single spending bill in Committee and the ‘August Recess’ is fast approaching (though, to be sure that recess may still be a victim of the COVID-19 disruption).