House to Meet today to Take Up HR 5376 – Inflation Reduction Act

The House will take an unusual break from their Summer Recess today to take up the Senate amendment to HR 5376, which is the vehicle for the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. The bill will be considered under a closed rule with a total of six hours of debate and no floor amendment. This is the typical method of considering partisan bills like this.

The House Twitterverse yesterday made a big show of how the Democrats stopped the Republicans from offering ‘reasonable’ amendments to the bill. Republicans offered 160 partisan amendments to the House Rules Committee, no Democrats offered amendments. When a bill like this is the result of prolonged and careful negotiations in the Senate, there is no way that the House leadership is going to allow any floor amendments to the bill that would toss the bill back into the legislative cauldron of the Senate, not if it is a bill they want to see passed.

There are no cybersecurity provisions in HR 5376 and none of the amendments proposed this week contained cybersecurity provisions.

There is nothing else on today schedule, but the Leadership may take care of some housekeeping measures before the House adjourns this afternoon. Baring something really unusual, the House will not be back in Washington until September.

Committee Hearings – Week of 11-14-21

With both the House and Senate back in Washington for a week between holidays, we have a nearly full slate of congressional hearings. Of interest here will be two ransomware hearings and markup of a cybersecurity bill.

Ransomware Hearings

On  Tuesday, the House Oversight and Reform Committee will hold a hearing on “Cracking Down on Ransomware: Strategies for Disrupting Criminal Hackers and Building Resilience Against Cyber Threats”. The witness list includes:

• Jen Easterly, CISA,

• Chris Inglis, National Cyber Director, and

• Bryan Vorndran, FBI

On Wednesday, two subcommittees of the House Homeland Security Committee will hold a joint hearing on “A Whole-of-Government Approach to Combatting Ransomware: Examining DHS’s Role”. The witness list includes:

• Rob Silvers, DHS,

• Jeremy Sheridan, Secret Service, and

• Brandon Wales, CISA

Neither hearing is expected to do more than mention controls system security in passing.

Cybersecurity Markup

On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee is holding a business meeting. In addition to a number of nominations, it will take-up S 2629, the Better Cybercrime Metrics Act. This bill would add law enforcement cybercrime reporting requirements, but does not address private sector reporting cybercrimes to law enforcement or federal agencies.

On the Floor

This week the House is scheduled to take up HR 5376, the Build Back Better Act. I have not yet reviewed the most likely version of the bill to appear before the House, I have been awaiting last minute changes.

The Senate will likely take up HR 4350, the FY 2022 National Defense Authorization Act. The Senate will ignore the House language, taking up instead substitute language based upon S 2972. Readers will have seen my posts about the large number of amendments that have been proposed. More will likely be coming this week. It will be interesting to see which amendments actually make it to the floor for consideration. This will not be quick and the final vote may be delayed until after the Thanksgiving recess.

 

Review - HR 5376 Introduced – Build Back Better

Yesterday, Rep Yarmuth (D,KY) introduced HR 5376, the latest reconciliation bill (popularly known as the Build Back Better bill). This is the long-awaited Democrat program spending bill that will not be subject to cloture requirements if/when it makes it to the Senate. The 2,468 page bill contains four sections with substantial cybersecurity spending and program requirements and three sections with cybersecurity mentions in passing. There are no chemical security or safety mentions in the bill. And beyond some fee establishment or increase provisons there are no pipeline safety or security mentions either.

The four sections with substantial cybersecurity provisions are:

§31102. Establishment of next generation 9–1–1 cybersecurity center (pg. 732).

§50001. Cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency (pg. 896).

§90009. National aeronautics and space administration oversight and cybersecurity (pg. 1067).

§90010. National Institute of Standards and Technology research (pg. 1068).

The House Rules Committee, as of this writing, has not set a meeting for establishing the rule for the consideration of HR 5376 on the floor of the House. It would seem that the House leadership is still working with members, the Senate and the White House to come up with a final version of this bill that will be able to pass in both the House and Senate.

While this bill is a priority for both President Biden and the Congressional Democratic leadership, Speaker Pelosi (D,CA) is unlikely to bring this bill to the House floor for a vote unless she is sure that the votes are available to pass it in the House, and is reasonably certain that there is support of the full Democratic Caucus in the Senate to pass the bill there.

Additionally, it is likely that the Rules Committee will be adding the debt limit extension to this bill, now that the Republicans in the Senate effectively killed HR 5305 yesterday in a party-line vote on the first cloture vote.

For more details on the cybersecurity provisions, including the cybersecurity mentions in passing, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/hr-5376-introduced - subscription required.

Bills Introduced – 9-27-21

Yesterday, with both the House and Senate in session there were 33 bills introduced. One of those bills may receive additional coverage in this blog:

HR 5376 To provide for reconciliation pursuant to title II of S. Con. Res. 14. Rep. Yarmuth, John A. [D-KY-3]

Knowing that at least one committee (House Science, Space, and Technology Committee) included cybersecurity spending in their portion of the bill, I will be watching this long (2,468 pages) bill for additional cybersecurity coverage.

Odd side note: Speaker Pelosi (D,CA) and the House Democratic Leadership have been calling this the ‘Build Back Better’ bill for weeks; that title is not included in the bill. We are stuck with the awkward “To provide for reconciliation pursuant to title II of S. Con. Res. 14.”. Yeah, everyone (okay, at least the supporters) is still going to call this the 'Build Back Better Bill'. "4B or not 4B, that is the questions". Sorry could not help myself.

Interestingly, the House held an unscheduled pro forma session on Sunday, presumably for the purpose of introducing this bill, but it was not apparently ready for introduction then, as the House Budget Committee held their final markup of the bill on Saturday. There was one bill introduced (HR 5374), but it was not of interest here.

BTW: I do want to mention another bill in passing that was introduced yesterday. I will probably not be following the bill in this blog, but it may have some rather interesting implications. That bill is:

HR 5388 To establish a strategic active pharmaceutical ingredient reserve to maintain a domestic supply of active pharmaceutical ingredients and key starting materials needed for the manufacturing of essential generic medicines, and to build a pipeline for domestic active pharmaceutical ingredient production. Rep. Spanberger, Abigail Davis [D-VA-7]