Review – S 2257 Introduced – FY 2026 Legislative Spending

Last week Sen Mullins (R,OK) introduced S 2257, the FY 2026 Legislative Branch spending bill. The Senate Appropriations Committee also published their Report on the bill. There are no cybersecurity mentions in the bill, but there are five discussions about cybersecurity issues in the Report. There is one drone restriction in the bill, but no related discussions in the Report.

This bill is similar to S 4678, the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act, 2025, that was introduced by Sen Reed (D,RI) in July, 2024. No action was taken on that bill in the Senate. That is not unusual since the Senate typically takes up the House version of spending bills, and then substitutes language from their bill, but the Senate did not take up HR 8772  (the House version) either.

Moving Forward

As I mentioned above, this bill (as such) will never be considered by the Senate. If the Senate does take up the House version, it would be expected to substitute language from this bill. It is too early to tell what the chances are of the Senate taking up this (or any of the other 11) spending bills this session.

Commentary

The Appropriations Committee continues to ignore unique cybersecurity needs of the operational networks (surveillance, access control, and building systems) on Capital Hill. This is not unexpected, given how the cybersecurity needs of these systems are rather poorly addressed in general, but it would have been interesting to see the Committee requiring the GAO to prepare a report on the cybersecurity status and needs of these systems. A really impressive report would include a classified annex listing all of the unpatched vulnerabilities in those systems.

 

For additional information on the provisions of this bill, including expanded commentary, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/s-2257-introduced-fy-2026-legislative - subscription required.

Review - HR 4249 Introduced – FY 2026 Legislative Spending

Last month Rep Valadao (R,CA) introduced HR 4249, the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act, 2026. The House Appropriations Committee published their Report on the bill. The bill includes one cybersecurity related discussion and two brief mentions about drone spending. The Committee report has an additional discussion about legislative branch cybersecurity.

The FY 2025 version of this bill was HR8772 introduced by Valadao on June 17^th, 2024. That bill was taken up by the House on July 11^th, 2025, and failed by a vote of 205 to 213. There were 10 Republicans (the usual suspects in the 118^th Congress) voting against the bill.

Moving Forward

As we saw with last year’s version of this bill, there is no real requirement for this spending bill (or any of the other remaining ten bills) to pass in the House. A series of continuing resolutions and maybe a year end omnibus bill will keep the government funded, especially this year since the Republicans will have no one to blame but themselves for failure to keep the governmental gelt coming; they do ‘control’ the House, the Senate, and the White House.

For more details about the provisions of this bill, including an expanded spending commentary, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/hr-4249-introduced-fy-2026-legislative - subscription required

Review - Bills Introduced – 6-30-25 – House Only

Yesterday, with the House meeting in pro forma session (and the Senate still in session doing a votarama on HR 1), there were 27 bills introduced. One of those bills will receive additional coverage in this blog:

 HR 4249 Legislative Branch Appropriations Act, 2026 Valadao, David G. [Rep.-R-CA-22] 

 

For more information on these bills, including legislative history for similar bills in the 118th, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/bills-introduced-6-30-25-house-only - subscription required.