Bills Introduced – 05-15-13

We are starting to see the introduction of appropriations and authorizations bills for FY 2014, with one of each being submitted yesterday. The agriculture bill may contain chemical security or safety items in light of the West Fertilizer explosion. As always the DOD spending bill may be expected to include cybersecurity provisions.

S 954 Latest Title: An original bill to reauthorize agricultural programs through 2018. Sponsor: Sen Stabenow, Debbie (D,MI)

HR 1960 Latest Title: To authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2014 for military activities of the Department of Defense and for military construction, to prescribe military personnel strengths for such fiscal year, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Rep McKeon, Howard P. "Buck" (R,CA)

We will just have to wait for the official publication of these bills to see what they actually contain.

HR 5856 Reported in Senate – DOD Appropriations

Yesterday the Senate Appropriations Committee filed their report on HR 5856, the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2013. There is no mention of cybersecurity or cyber-warfare in the report. While the House version of this report recommended that DOD consolidate the reporting of cybersecurity funding in their budget request, the Senate is completely ignoring the issue.

When the Senate comes back to work in September this bill will probably be one that takes priority. It could also become a vehicle for cybersecurity amendments.

House passes HR 1540

This evening the House passed HR 1540, the FY 2012 DOD appropriations bill, by a bipartisan vote of 283 – 136. Democrats were evenly split on their voting on the bill and the Republican leadership was apparently able to hold more of their caucus under control for this bill, keeping all but 43 Republicans voting in favor of the bill.

While the Senate could vote on it this evening it may be tomorrow before it comes to the floor of the Senate. The Senate will almost certainly also vote to pass this bill; then it will go to the President. There are some unconfirmed media reports that President Obama’s threatened veto has been quietly lifted.

HR 2219 – Senate Language Changes – DOD Appropriations

Well, I finally had a chance to review the Senate substitute language for HR 2219, the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2012. While there are wholesale changes in the Senate language they have no appreciable effect on the cyber security provisions of the bill because there were no such provisions in the House language and there are none in the Senate language. Cyber security still remains a miniscule part of the DOD budget.

The cyber security provisions from the House Report on the bill that I discussed in an earlier blog will still apply to DOD, almost regardless of what happens on the Senate floor or in Conference. The various reports to Congress will still have to be made unless DOD wants to incur the wrath of an Appropriations Committee scorned. Fortunately for DOD there are no additional cyber security reports required in the Senate Report on this bill.

We'll see what happens when this comes to the Senate Floor.

House Passes HR 2219, the FY 2012 DOD Appropriations Bill

On Friday, the full House, after three days of floor amendments, passed the FY 2012 DOD appropriations bill in a decidedly bipartisan manner; 336 to 87. Over half of the Democrats in the House voted for the bill (112-75) and there were 12 Republicans voting against the bill

No further homeland security or cyber security measures were brought to the floor. The two amendments that I discussed in the previous blog on this bill were not submitted for actual consideration.

This means that, for homeland security or cyber security purposes, this bill remains essentially the same as I described in my post on the Appropriations Committee report on the bill.

Senate Inaction

This bill will move to the Senate for consideration, hopefully before the start of the 2012 fiscal year on October 1st. Typically the Senate would substitute language from their own version of the bill to start the consideration process. The Senate Appropriations Committee has not yet published even a draft sub-committee version of their bill yet.

I suspect that the main reason for the delay is the continuing discussions on the debt limit extension. Since there will apparently be some sort of spending cuts included in the final deal, it probably makes sense for the Senate to hold off. This is especially true since the cuts in their version of the bill will probably be significantly different than those found in the House passed bill.