Review - S 2443 Introduced – FY 2024 EWR Spending

Back in July, the late Sen Feinstein introduced S 2443, the Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies (EWR) Appropriations Act, 2024. The Senate Appropriations Committee published their Report on the bill. The bill contains two entries related to cybersecurity and the Report includes a number of discussions about cybersecurity related matters.

Moving Forward

While the House passed HR 4394 with significantly different language (and most spending numbers), the Senate does not typically try to amend the House language piecemeal. Instead, the Appropriations Committee offers the language from their version of the bill as a substitute language for the bill, and the Senate amends it from there. Once, (if) the revised bill is passed in the Senate, then it goes to a conference committee to work out the differences. The final version of the bill goes back to the House and Senate for an up or down vote, and then to the President for signature.

That is what is supposed to happen. The Republican lead House has been much more partisan in their crafting of spending bills, making no pretense of looking for bipartisan support. The Democratic lead Senate has attempted to craft their versions with more focus on bipartisanship, but so far, moving spending bills through the process in the Senate has been much more difficult than normal with a handful of Republicans trying to force votes on extremely partisan amendments.

With HR 4366 still wending its way through the legislative process in the Senate, it is not yet clear that the body can pass a spending bill. To make matters worse, the House representatives on any conference committee have little incentive to try to work out a bipartisan version of the bill with their Senate counterparts, as any such compromise will be seen as an abject surrender by a significant portion of the Republican conference.

At this point, I am not sure that there is a way for funding bills to make it through the process to reach the President’s desk.

 

For more details about the cybersecurity provisions of the legislation – see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/s-2443-introduced - subscription required.

House Passes HR 4394 – FY 2024 EWR Spending

Yesterday, the House completed consideration of HR 4394, the Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies [EWR] Appropriations Act, 2024. After adopting an additional 15 amendments and rejecting 24 amendments (none of specific interest here), the House passed the amended legislation by a nearly party-line vote of 210 to 199. One Republican {Rep Buck (R,CO)} voted against the bill.

When the Senate gets around to taking up this bill, they will substitute language from S 2443 and begin their amendment process there.

Review - House Takes Up HR 4394 – FY 2024 EWR Spending

Yesterday, with the Speaker Logjam at least temporarily broken, the House resumed where they left off on October 3^rd, 2023, consideration of HR 4394, the Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies [EWR] Appropriations Act, 2024, under a structured rule. Nineteen amendments were considered yesterday with four being approved by voice votes.

Moving Forward

The House is scheduled to finish consideration of HR 4394 today. This bill will likely be an interesting gauge of how some of the moderate Republicans are going to respond to the fallout of the Speaker Chaos of the last three weeks. I suspect that there will be more Republican no votes on some of these spending reduction amendments. How the more radical elements of the party respond to that repudiation will be a measure of how much they have learned about the need for compromise in the House.

 

For more details about what amendments were considered yesterday, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/house-takes-up-hr-4394 - subscription required.

House Passes H Res 757 – Office of Speaker Vacant

Today, the House took up Rep Gaetz’ (R,FL) motion to vacate the Office of the Speaker of the House, H Res 757. The House passed the resolution by a vote of 216 to 210 [link added, 5:44 pm EDT]. Rep McCarthy (R,CA) is no longer Speaker of the House. In accordance with House Rules, Rep McHenry (R,NC) is now the Speaker Pro Tempore. House is currently in recess subject to the call of the Chair to allow the two caucuses a chance to meet to consider ‘the way forward’.

Earlier a motion was made to table H Res 757. That motion failed by a vote of 208 to 218.

We are almost certainly in for a remake of the vote for Speaker in January. I suspect that McCarthy’s and that of Rep Jeffries (D,NC) will be among the names nominated for Speaker.

Needless to say, there will be no further consideration of HR 4394, the EWR spending bill. Before the House considered H Res 757, the House took up H Res 756, the rule for the consideration of HR 4394. That rule passed by a nearly party-line vote of 218 to 208 with Rep Rogers (R,AL) voting Nay.

Review - House to Begin Consideration of HR 4394 – FY 2024 EWR Spending

As expected, the House is scheduled to take up HR 4394, the Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies [EWR] Appropriations Act, 2024, under a structured rule. The House Rules Committee met yesterday to formulate that rule. That rule adopts one of the spending-reduction proposed amendments and provides for the consideration of 60 amendments on the House floor, including two of the three amendments {Fallon (#17) and Walberg (#18)} that I mentioned yesterday.

Moving Forward

The House will begin consideration today and have a final vote on the bill tomorrow. This means that the House is unlikely to conduct a late session this evening. There is a chance that the bill will not receive enough votes to pass, Democrats will all vote against and we might see some moderate Republican reject the spending reductions in the bill.

Commentary  

Anyone that expected a change in the influence of the Republican 11 after this weekend’s passage of the continuing resolution would be surprised at the spending reduction attempts authorized by the Rules Committee. They should not be; spending cuts are still a strong part of the Republican agenda. It will be interesting to see, however, if moderate Republicans continue to allow the more conservative elements of the party to control these spending bills.

 

For more details about the consideration of the bill, including highlights of the spending reduction amendments, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/house-to-begin-consideration-of-hr - subscription required.

Review - Rules Committee to Look at HR 4394 – FY 2024 EWR Spending

The House Rules Committee will hold a rule hearing this afternoon that would include HR 4394, the Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies [EWR] Appropriations Act, 2024. The deadline for submitting amendments for the Committee to consider including in the Rule was last Friday, 122 amendments have been submitted.

Three of the 122 amendments may be of specific interest here:

#	Version	Author
19	Version 1	Hudson (NC)
28	Version 1	Fallon (TX)
115	Version 1	Walberg (MI) , Latta (OH)

Moving Forward

The Rules Committee meets at 4:00 pm EDT. Barring some drama from the three Republican 11 representatives on the Committee, a rule will be formulated for this and HR 4364, the Legislative Branch spending bill. The House will begin taking up the two bills on Tuesday.

Commentary

The House was scheduled to start a two-week District Work Period. Normally, this would be a break from Washington while the two appropriations committees started work on an omnibus spending bill. It appears that McCarthy still intends on attempting to pass standalone bills. Between the time the Senate needs to act on these bills and the individual conference committees needed to reconcile the House an Senate versions, this will take up every bit of the time to the new November 17^th deadline.

 

For more information about the upcoming meeting, including the details of the three amendments, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/rules-committee-to-look-at-hr-4394 - subscription required.

HR 4364 Introduced – FY 2024 Legislative Branch Spending

Back in June, Rep Amodei (R,NV) introduced HR 4364, the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act, 2024. At the same time, the House Appropriations Committee published their Report on the bill. While there are a couple of cybersecurity mentions in the bill, they are entirely (and legitimately) focused on protecting the information technology systems used by members of congress. There is one building control system security mention in the Report (pg 19); a $2.1 million listing for “BASnet Cybersecurity Hardware and Network Programming Upgrades”.

Moving Forward

The House Rules Committee will be meeting on Monday afternoon to formulate the rule for the consideration of this bill, along with HR 4394 [removed from paywall], the Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies [EWR] Appropriations Act, 2024. To date, only one amendment has been proposed for the Committee’s consideration. This bill normally gets substantial bipartisan support and this year should be no different.

Commentary

Okay, I have to mention this because it is video surveillance related. The one amendment proposed to the House Rules Committee was submitted by Rep Massie (R,KY). The amendment reads:

“No funds appropriated in this bill shall be used to allow the department of defense (sic) to install or operate cameras on the Capitol complex.”

Just a tad bit of paranoia showing? Besides if an outside agency (and DOD would not be my first suspect) would use their own funds to install such a camera network (if they did not just hack the current security camera system) and if the capital security folks were compromised sufficiently to allow such installation, it would not take any ‘funding’ from Congress to ‘allow’ the installation. Of course, seeing the poor-quality camera images from Saturday’s FireAlarmGate incident, maybe Congress should get DOD to install their internal surveillance systems. DOD certainly has access to better quality cameras.

Review - HR 4394 Introduced – FY 2024 EWD Spending

Late last month, Rep Fleischmann introduced HR 4394, the Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2024. The House Appropriations Committee published their Report on the bill. The bill only contains one cybersecurity mention, but the report discusses multiple cybersecurity issues as well as some unique chemical processing issues.

Moving Forward

See my blog post “Coming FY 2024 Spending Bill Logjams” for a discussion about the potential for spending bills (including this one) to move forward. Of special interest here is the fact that the spending levels for DOE’s Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response in this bill are the same as those provided in the final FY 2023 bill. While this is a $45 million decrease from the Administration’s budget request, it is not a spending decrease as envisioned by fiscal conservatives.

 

For more details about the cybersecurity provisions within the bill and report see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/hr-4394-introduced - subscription required. 

Bills Introduced – 6-30-23

Yesterday, with the House meeting in pro forma session, there were 75 bills introduced. Three of those bills may receive additional attention in this blog:

HR 4394 Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2024 Fleischmann, Charles J. "Chuck" [Rep.-R-TN-3]

HR 4403 To amend the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to make improvements to the Securing the Cities program, and for other purposes. Carter, Troy [Rep.-D-LA-2]

HR 4429 To amend the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to direct the Secretary of Homeland Security to implement a standardized training program for employees of the Office of Intelligence and Analysis of the Department of Homeland Security, and for other purposes.

I will be covering HR 4394.

I will be watching HR 4403 and 4429 for language or definitions that specifically address chemical security or cybersecurity issues in the scope of the bill.

Mention in Passing

From time to time I will see a bill introduced that makes me wonder what that congress critter was thinking. Usually, I just ignore such bills, secure in the knowledge that institutional inertia will insure that the silliness does not make it into law. But, sometimes, I just need to point them out. Today, there is one such bill:

HR 4399 To direct the Comptroller General of the United States to conduct a study on the potential inclusion of black box data recorders in tactical vehicles of the Armed Forces. Buchanan, Vern [Rep.-R-FL-16]

Black-box data recorders were developed for aircraft (where they are actually bright-orange to aid in location) to help investigators identify what was going on in an aircraft before it crashed. They have made their way into most modern automobiles where the issue has been raised about the constitutionality (self-incrimination) of the use of their information in criminal or civil proceedings. I do not understand what purpose would be served by installing such devices in tactical military vehicles, but I do know that they would be able to provide a wealth of intelligence information to an adversary who was able to capture such an equipped vehicle on the battlefield. Oh well, the GAO does not have anything better to investigate, I suppose.