House Passed Three Spending Bills – 6-28-24

This morning the House completed work on the three spending bills that it has been working on this week under  H Res 1316. All three spending bills passed with near party-line votes

HR 8774, DOD Spending

At the start of this morning’s session, the House took up the last three amendments for HR 8774, the DOD spending bills. They then considered a routine series of procedural moves before moving to the final vote on the bill. The House passed the bill by a vote of 217 to 198. Five Democrats voted with the Republicans and on Republican voted with the Democrats. Seventeen members did not vote.

HR 8752, DHS Spending

The House then took up HR 8752, the FY 2025 DHS spending bill. After a series of routine procedural moves, the House voted 212 to 203 to pass the bill. One Democrat and one Republican voted with the other side. Seventeen members did not vote.

HR 8771, State Dept Spending

The House then took up HR 8771, the FY 2025 State Department spending bill. Again, after a series of routine procedural moves the House voted 212 to 200 to pass the bill. Again, one Republican and one Democrat voted with the other side. Twenty members did not vote.

Moving Forward

The Senate will not consider the passed language for HR 8774 and HR 8771, they will instead take up language still to be crafted by the Senate Appropriations Committee as substitute language for these bills. In the unlikely event that one of these bills passes in the Senate (after being further amended) before the end of September, a conference committee will work out the differences between the House and Senate versions. What is more likely is that an omnibus (or series of minibus) spending bill(s) will be crafted behind closed doors by the respective leaders of the two spending committees. What is not clear yet is the timing of that/those bills; whether it will be in December of this year or March of next.

Spending Bills Considered – 6-26-24

Today the House began consideration of three spending bills (HR 8774, DOD spending; HR 8752, DHS spending; and HR 8771, State Department spending) after approving the rule for that consideration (H Res 1316) by a straight party-line vote of 207 to 201 with 12 members from each party not voting.

The House started with the consideration of HR 8752, the FY 2025 DHS spending bill. After working through the first 39 amendments (and one en bloc amendment containing 28 individual amendments), the House postponed further consideration of the bill at about 4:45 pm EDT.

The House then began consideration of HR 8771, the State Department spending bill. After working through the first 45 amendments (and on en block amendment containing 32 individual amendments), the House postponed further consideration of the bill at about 8:15 pm EDT.

The House will probably resume consideration of these two bills tomorrow, with final votes before dinner. The House will then likely begin consideration of HR 8774, the FY 2025 DOD spending bill. The House is scheduled to hold their final vote of the week at about 3:00 pm on Friday.

Rule for Consideration of HR 8752 – FY 2025 DHS Spending

Last night, the House Rules Committee finished their consideration of three spending bills (HR 8774, DOD spending; HR 8752, DHS spending; and HR 8771, State Department spending). They crafted a single rule (H Res 1316) for the consideration of the three bills. This is a structured rule with limited debate and a limited number of amendments that can be considered on the floor.

For HR 8752, the rule provides for potential consideration of only 61 amendments (listed in H Rept 118-559, pgs 32-6) out of the 252 amendments that had been submitted to the Rules Committee. Neither of the two amendments that I had discussed as being of potential interest here were included in the 61. Specifically, Garbarino’s CFATS spending amendment was not included in the list to be considered. So there will be no provisions in this bill that will ‘save’ the CFATS program. 

As was done last year with HR 4367 (FY 2024 DHS spending), the Rule contains the following provision:

“31. Provides that the Clerk shall not transmit to the Senate a message that the House has passed H.R. 8752 until notified by the Speaker that H.R. 2, as passed by the House on May 11, 2023, has been enacted into law.”

HR 2 is the Republican signature border security bill. Since the Democratically controlled Senate is not going to consider HR 2, this means that there will be no mechanism for the Senate to consider HR 8752. As we saw last year, the Senate, in considering one of the other spending bills can just include language from their version of the DHS spending bill (not yet crafted) as part of the substitute language for that other spending bill. And besides that, we are almost certainly going to see some sort of omnibus or minibus spending bill later this year or next instead of passing 12 spending bills, so this provision is grandstanding on the part of the House leadership.

The House will take up H Res 1316 today. While that resolution lists the three spending bills in DOD, State, and DHS order, that does not mean that that will be the order in which the bills are considered. It is even possible (it was done last year) that they could consider some of the amendments in each bill and then come back and finish up each bill later. The only thing we know about the plan at this point is that the House Leadership plans to finish up votes by 3:00 pm (EDT) on Friday.

Review - HR 8572 Reported in House – FY 2025 DHS Spending Bill

Last week, the House Appropriations Committee published their report for HR 8572, the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2025 and the text of the reported version of the bill. There is on specific cybersecurity language or chemical security language in the bill. The report contains discussions about both, but no mention of the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) program.

The House Rules Committee is scheduled to meet on Tuesday to formulate the rule for the consideration of three spending bills, including HR 8572. There have been 232 amendments submitted to the Rules Committee to date for consideration in the debate on the DHS spending bill; two of possible interest here. One is a CFATS amendment that does not extend the program. The second is a cybersecurity amendment to increase funding for research on preventing cyberattacks. The bill is scheduled to be considered by the Full House this coming week.

Spending Bill Items of Interest

As I noted above, there is no language related to chemical security or cybersecurity in the bill itself. I have extracted some of the spending numbers that may be of interest here, along with comparisons to the version of the FY 2024 spending bill reported in the House last year. This allows for a look at how the Appropriations Committee has changed their DHS outlook over time.

Moving Forward

It is clear from the ‘Minority Views’ portion (pgs 173-5) of the Committee Report that HR 8752 as written and reported is a very partisan bill. If it passes it will be by a narrow, nearly party-line vote. Thus, it will have to be considered under a rule to be crafted by the Rules Committee, what is not yet clear is if it is partisan enough to get at least two of the three radical Republican votes in that Committee and avoids Republican votes against the rule on Wednesday.

 

For more details about chemical security and cybersecurity discussions in the Report, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/hr-8572-reported-in-house - subscription required.