HR 2659 Passed in House – Cyber Resilience

Yesterday the House began consideration of HR 2659, the Strengthening Cyber Resilience Against State-Sponsored Threats Act, under the suspension of the rules process. After about 13 minutes of debate a recorded vote was requested. Later in the evening the House passed the bill by a strongly bipartisan vote of 402 to 8. The eight nay votes were contrarian Republicans that have opposed much of the legislation in the 119^th Congress.

The bill would require DHS to establish a joint agency task force to detect, analyze, and respond to the cybersecurity threat posed by State-sponsored cyber actors, including Volt Typhoon, of the People’s Republic of China. The Chair of the Task Force would come from CISA and the Vice Chair from the FBI. No new funding is authorized by this legislation.

As is typical for bills being considered under the suspension of rules, the debate was shorter than the allocated 40 minutes. It was also one-sided, with no one speaking against the bill.

The bill now goes to the Senate for possible consideration. The bill is unlikely to come to the floor under regular order; it is just not politically important enough to consume the amount of Senate floor time needed to undergo that process. The opposition to the bill in the House, would seem to indicate that, if this bill were offered under the unanimous consent process, one of the contrarian Republicans in the Senate would rise to object to that consideration, effectively killing the bill. I suspect that the only way that this bill makes its way to the President’s desk would be by adding it to some other must pass bill.

Review – Committee Hearings – Week of 11-16-25

With both the House and Senate in session this week (the first time that both were in Washington at the same time since the last week in September), there is a moderately busy hearing schedule. The Senate continues to concentrate on nominations (see the Washington Post nomination tracking page), while the House catches up on a host of talking point hearings. There is an aggressive list of bills to be considered on the floor of the House, both under suspension and under rules.

On the Floor

Today the House will begin consideration of eight bills under the suspension of the rules process with another nine scheduled for tomorrow. Bills of potential interest here include:

HR 2659 – Strengthening Cyber Resilience Against State-Sponsored Threats Act,

HR 5078 – PILLAR Act, as amended, and

HR 5062 – Pipeline Security Act

 

For more information on these hearings, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/committee-hearings-week-of-11-16 - subscription required.

Review - Bills Introduced – 4-7-25

Yesterday, with both the House and Senate in session, there were 61 bills introduced. Two of those bills may receive additional coverage in this blog:

HR 2659 To ensure the security and integrity of United States critical infrastructure by establishing an interagency task force and requiring a comprehensive report on the targeting of United States critical infrastructure by People's Republic of China state-sponsored cyber actors, and for other purposes. Ogles, Andrew [Rep.-R-TN-5]

HR 2683 To provide for control of remote access of items under the Export Control Reform Act of 2018. Lawler, Michael [Rep.-R-NY-17] 

 

For more information on these bills, including legislative history for similar bills in the 118^th, as well as a discussion about two bills in passing, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/bills-introduced-4-8-25 - subscription required.

HR 2659 Introduced - United States-Israel Cybersecurity Cooperation

Back in March, Rep Langevin (D,RI) introduced HR 2659, the United States-Israel Cybersecurity Cooperation Enhancement Act of 2021. The bill would require DHS to establish a grant program to support joint US-Israeli cybersecurity research, development, and commercialization efforts. The bill authorizes a minimum of $6 million to support the grant program each year through 2026. The bill is very similar to S 1193 (subscription required).

Differences

The differences between this bill and S 1193 are simply editorial. S 1193 puts the definitions in §2 of the bill and HR 2659 puts them in §2(c). And this bill provides a more detailed of the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015 in the definition of “cybersecurity threat”. While these differences are practically inconsequential, they are technically sufficient from preventing these bills from being ‘companion bills’.

Moving Forward

Langevin and his sole cosponsor {Rep Garbarino (R,NY)} are both members of the House Homeland Security Committee to which this bill has been assigned for consideration. This means that, unlike S 1193, there could be sufficient influence to have this bill considered in Committee. While there should be bipartisan support for this bill, there may be enough opposition caused by concerns about the recent flareup in cross-border violence in Israel to stop this bill from being considered; it would be divisive for the Democratic caucus.