HR 3838 Passed in House – FY 2026 NDAA

Yesterday the House passed HR 3838, the Streamlining Procurement for Effective Execution and Delivery and National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026, by a somewhat bipartisan (four Republicans voted Nay and 17 Democrats voted Aye) vote of 231 to 196. The House considered the bill over two days under a rule that authorized 298 amendments to be introduced during the debate on the bill.

Each of the eight cybersecurity amendments and one Space Geek amendment that I discussed in my rule post were approved by voice votes during four separate en bloc votes.

The bill now goes to the Senate that is currently considering their version of the bill (S 2296). Once that bill is passed, the Senate will take up HR 3838, substituting the passed S 2296 language, adopting the revised version, and sending it back to the House. The House could either adopt that version (unlikely) or request a conference committee to resolve the differences between the two versions of the bill. At some future date the conferenced version would be voted upon by both bodies.

Review – HR 3838 Rule for Consideration – FY 2026 NDAA

The House Rules Committee completed their rule hearing for the consideration of HR 3838, the Streamlining Procurement for Effective Execution and Delivery and National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026. In addition to making some changes to the reported text of the bill, the Committee completed work on the rule for the consideration of the bill this week (scheduled later today), including approving the introduction of 298 amendments. Nine of those amendments are of potential interest here, eight related to cybersecurity issues and one Space Geek related amendment. There are no chemical safety related amendments beyond the obligatory fentanyl issues and surprisingly no counter unmanned aircraft system (UAS) amendments cleared for consideration.

Moving Forward

Consideration will start today with the approval of the rule resolution. The actual consideration of HR 3838 will probably start tomorrow. The rule authorizes 10 minutes of debate for each of the 298 amendments, but many will be considered en bloc with a single vote covering multiple amendments. Those would be amendments with little or no opposition, with most of the amendments of interest here falling into that category. Amendment #79, providing for NSA cybersecurity support to the parts of the private sector, probably will not be one of the en bloc amendments, but I would expect it to pass.

The final vote on HR 3838 is expected to be held on Thursday. Baring unforeseen issues, the bill is expected to pass with some level of bipartisan support.

 

For more information on the amendments of interest here, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/hr-3838-rule-for-consideration-fy - subscription required.