Senate Agrees to Conference on HR 4521 – America COMPETES Act

On Thursday, the Senate considered the House message to go to conference on resolving their differences on HR 4521, the America COMPETES Act of 2022. By a final vote of 67 to 27, the Senate insisted on their amendments to the bill, agreed to a conference committee, and authorized the Chair to appoint the Senate representatives to that conference.

HR 4521 started off in the House last summer as the Bioeconomy Research and Development Act of 2021. The bill quickly morphed into a massive spending and authorization bill. When it finally passed in the House in February, it contained 19 Divisions that included everything from cybersecurity, to temporary duty suspensions and even a child care resource guide requirement.

When the bill arrived in the Senate, it looked for sure that the party-line vote in the House would prevent the bill from moving forward in the Senate. But the Leadership had a different idea, instead of considering the House version of the bill they quickly substituted language from S 1260, an equally bloated, but more bipartisan, spending and authorization bill that had passed in the Senate with a moderately bipartisan vote of 68 to 32 last June. With a few minor tweaks and amendments the substitute language was adopted in HR 4521 in a similar vote of 68 to 28 just a month ago.

With many similarities between the two bills, but even more differences, this will be an interesting backroom challenge to craft compromise language between the two massive versions. Fortunately, the one area that will see the most agreement will be in the area of cybersecurity, with most of the provisions in both bills probably making it into the final version.

House Disagrees with Senate Amendment to HR 4521 – Competes Act

The House considered the Senate’s Amendment to H.R. 4521, the America COMPETES Act, that was passed earlier this week. Under the unanimous consent process, the House disagreed with the Senate amendment and requested a conference with the Senate to work out the differences between the two versions of the bill.

HR 4521 Passed in Senate – COMPETES Act

Yesterday, the Senate completed their consideration of H.R. 4521, the America COMPETES Act. The Senate closed debate on the substitute language based on S 1260 and passed the bill by identical votes of 68 to 28. The bill goes back to the House for consideration of the Senate’s changes to the bill. The House is likely to insist on their language, which would send the bill to a conference committee to work out the differences.

Committee Hearings – Week of 3-27-22

This week with both the House and Senate in session, there is a nearly normal hearing schedule. The FY 2023 spending process starts with the presentation of the President’s budget. There will be one markup hearing that includes cybersecurity legislation. There will also be two hearings of interest here, one on critical infrastructure cybersecurity and one on DHS counter-drone operations.

FY 2023 Budget Hearings

• Tuesday – House Budget Committee

• Wednesday – Senate Budget Committee

Cybersecurity Markup

On Wednesday, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will hold a business meeting. In addition to eight nominations to consider, the Committee will take up eleven postal naming bills and eleven ‘normal’ pieces of legislation. One of the later is S 3511, the Satellite Cybersecurity Act. Do not expect much discussion, whatever issues exist in this Committee are normally dealt with behind closed doors, but amendments are possible.

Cyber Threat Hearing

On Wednesday, The House Homeland Security Committee will hold a hearing on “Mobilizing Our Cyber Defenses: Securing Critical Infrastructure Against Russian Cyber Threats”. The witness list includes:

• Adam Meyers, Crowdstrike,

• Mr. Steve Silberstein, CEO, Financial Services-ISAC 

• Kevin Morley, American Water Works Association

It will be interesting to here the private sector point of view on this topic after all of the warnings from various Federal agencies over the last couple of weeks.

Counter-Drone Operations

On Thursday, there will be a joint hearing of two Subcommittees of the House Homeland Security Committee looking at “Assessing the Department of Homeland Security's Efforts to Counter Unmanned Aircraft Systems”. The witness list includes:

• Samantha Vinograd, Office of Strategy, Policy, and Plans,

• Rear Admiral Scott W. Clendenin, USCG,

• Austin Gould, TSA,

• Dennis J. Michelini, U.S. Customs and Border Protection

The last witness was added by the Republicans. They will be using Michelini’s testimony to attack the President’s ‘lack of action on the Southern Border’. Just a reminder, DHS has very limited authority to conduct counter-drone operations.

On the Floor

The major bill in the House this week will be HR 3617, the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act. It will come to the floor later in the week, so the House will have time to consider a total of 17 bills under their suspension of the rules process. Those bills include:

S 2629 – the Better Cybercrime Metrics Act, and

HR 6865 – the Don Young Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2022,

The Senate is scheduled to finish up action on HR 4521 this evening. While many things could happen to delay the final vote, I suspect that the Senate will adopt the substitute language this evening. Then the conference process will begin to iron out the major differences in the two bills. The final bill will be larger than either of the two alternatives and will almost certainly contain both sets of cybersecurity provisions.

Senate Continues Debate on HR 4521 – 3-24-22

Yesterday, the Senate continued their consideration of HR 4521, the America Competes Act. No votes were taken. A unanimous consent agreement (pg S1767) was reached to allow the cloture vote on the substitute language amendment to proceed on Monday evening. If that vote succeeds, the Senate will immediately proceed to an actual vote on the amendment and then on the amended bill. No new amendments have been offered.

Senate Continues Debate on HR 4521 – 3-24-22

Yesterday, the Senate continued their consideration of HR 4521, the America Competes Act. The Senate agreed to the motion to proceed to debate HR 4521 by a vote of 66 to 31. The Senate is considering the substitute language introduced earlier this week. A cloture motion to close debate on that amendment was filed yesterday with a vote scheduled for Friday. If agreed to, the Senate will immediately vote on a cloture motion for the full bill.

There were seven amendments (SA 5003 to SA 5009) to the substitute language filed yesterday. None of them are substantive; they were submitted by Sen Schumer (D,NY) to ‘fill the amendment tree’, limiting the amendments that could be offered on substitute language.

A final vote on the bill is not likely this week. It would need a unanimous consent agreement to avoid having to wait for the post-cloture time to runout before voting on the substitute language and the final bill. There is enough opposition to the bill to ensure that someone would object to such an agreement.

Senate Continues Consideration of HR 4521 – COMPETES Act

Yesterday, the Senate continued their debate on HR 4521, the America COMPTES Act. A vote will be held this morning on proceeding to vote on amendments to the bill. To date, only one amendment has been offered, SA 5002. That amendment would provide substitute language for the bill that would essentially be substituting the language from S 1260 that had previously been adopted by the Senate, but not taken up by the House.

The Senate is likely to finish work on the bill late this week. The House would then have to decide if it would accept the revised Senate language or go to conference to work out the differences in the bill. I expect that the House will demand a conference, otherwise they would just have taken up S 1260. This could delay the completion of action on this bill for weeks.

Senate Begins Consideration of HR 4521 – COMPETES Act

Yesterday, the Senate began consideration of HR 4521, the America COMPETES Act of 2022. A cloture vote was ordered for Monday evening on the motion to proceed to debate on the bill. There were no amendments offered which is typically a sign on bills like this that no one expects the debate to begin. The bill passed in the House on a very nearly party-line vote so there is unlikely to be 60 votes to begin debate.

This ‘biotechnology bill’ quickly morphed to a major technology spending/regulation package similar in scope to S 1260 that was passed in the Senate. It does contain some interesting cybersecurity provisions.

Review - HR 4521 Passed in House – COMPETES Act

Earlier this month the House passed HR 4521, the America COMPETES Act of 2022. While billed as a ‘bioeconomy’ bill, this legislation is another huge (3610 pages) legislative conglomeration that addresses a large number of disparate issues. It includes 10 distinct sections addressing cybersecurity issues, funding for a cybersecurity training program and 12 separate mentions in passing of cybersecurity provisions in loosely related requirements.

Spending for Cybersecurity Training

Section 10303 authorizes spending for a variety of programs through the National Science Foundation. This includes money for the Cybercorps Scholarship for Service Program:

FY 2022 - $70,000,000,

FY 2023 - $72,000,000,

FY 2024 - $78,000,000,

FY 2025 - $84,000,000, and

FY 2026 - $90,000,000

Cybersecurity Sections

The bill contains ten sections that deal specifically with cybersecurity issues. Many of these sections are essentially the same as standalone legislative proposals that have already been offered in the House and/or Senate. Most of those earlier bills have little chance of making it through the legislative process on their own. The ten cybersecurity sections are:

§10223. NIST authority for cybersecurity and privacy activities

§10224. Software security and authentication.

§20102. Understanding cybersecurity of mobile networks. [HR 2685]

§20106. NTIA policy and cybersecurity coordination [HR 4046]

§20107. American cybersecurity literacy [HR 4055]

§30127. Digital connectivity and cybersecurity partnership.

§40101. Federal Rotational Cyber Workforce Program [HR 3599 or S 1097]

§50107. Improving cybersecurity of small entities [HR 6541]

§50108. Critical Technology Security Centers.

§90601. Dr. David Satcher cybersecurity education grant program. [S 2305]

Moving Forward

The bill passed in the House by a nearly (1 Democrat and 1 Republican voted the other way) straight party-line vote of 222 to 210. This would indicate that the bill would never pass the cloture process for consideration in the Senate. Nor is it a given that if it did make it to a vote in the Senate, that there would be enough votes for it to be sent to the President.

There is one potential route forward for this bill. If the House were to vote to amend S 1260, the Endless Frontiers Act (a similar conglomeration bill) with the language from this bill, then the Senate would insist on their language and the two versions of the bill would go to conference to work out the differences. A conference version would pass in the House on a party-line vote and may make it through the Senate (with judicious paring and reduced spending).

For more details about the cybersecurity provisions of this bill, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/hr-4521-passed-in-house - subscription required.

Homeland Security Committee Amends and Adopts HR 4251 – SMART Port Security Act

At today’s hearing of the House Homeland Security Committee HR 4251, the Securing Maritime Activities through Risk-based Targeting for (SMART) Port Security Act, was amended and adopted by a broadly bipartisan voice vote.

The amendment in the nature of a substitute that I had mentioned in an earlier blog was agreed to in a voice vote. Two additional amendments were adopted by unanimous consent, functionally the same as a unanimous vote.

The first amendment, offered by Rep. Richardson (D,CA), would amend 46 USC §70107(b)(2) to allow Port Security Grants to be used for the replacement of security equipment. This is similar to HR 5802 which she had recently introduced.

The second amendment, offered by Rep. Cravaack (R,MN), would require a report by the DHS Secretary on “unnecessary redundancies or overlaps in Federal transportation security credentialing programs” (§208). The report would also include suggestions for correcting those overlaps and redundancies.

If/when this bill makes it to a floor vote, it will almost certainly pass without the necessity of a rule. Of course it could also get added to another bill, the Coast Guard authorization bill that I discussed earlier, for instance.