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 - S 4678 Introduced – FY 2025 Legislative Spending

Last month, Sen Reex (D,RI) introduced S 4678, the FY 2025 Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies bill. The Senate Appropriations Committee published their report on the bill. The bill contains no mention of cybersecurity or chemical safety issues. The Report includes multiple cybersecurity discussions.

Moving Forward

The House version of this spending bill, HR 8772 [removed from paywall], was rejected by the House on a ‘bipartisan’ vote of 205 to 213 (ten Republicans voted Nay, three Democrats vote Yeah, so the vote was somewhat bipartisan). Technically, this means that the Senate cannot take up this bill, because all spending bills must originate in the House. That makes consideration of this bill low priority in the Senate.

 

For more details about the cybersecurity provisions within the bill, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/s-4678-introduced - subscription required.

House Rejected HR 8772 – FY 2025 Legislative Spending Bill

On Thursday, the House took up HR 8772, the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act, 2025. After agreeing to one amendment and rejecting three others, the House rejected the bill by a vote of 205 to 213 with 15 members (8 R’s and 7 D’s) not voting. Ten Republicans voted Nay and three Democrats voted Yay.

One of the Republicans voting against the bill, Rep Clyde (R,GA), objected to the bill in floor debate (H4594) because of §214 of the bill violates the provisions of the 27^th Amendment that require any changes made to congressional pay will not take effect in the session in which the changes were enacted. That was the only Republican voice raised in the opposition to the bill during the general debate. Interestingly, there were no Republican votes against the rule for the consideration of this bill in the Rules Committee.

This failure to pass this bill shows that the Republican House is going to continue to have problems getting the 12 spending bills to the President. There is going to be substantial opposition in the Senate to many of the provisions (and the spending amounts) in the House bills, but if the leadership cannot even get bills through the house they nominally (VERY nominally) control, they will have the same problems they had last year forcing the Senate to acquiesce to any of their demands. To be fair, no one who has watched Washington for the last couple of years expected any different.

NOTE: This post is a little late, but the Congressional Record for Thursday was just published today. That combined with the Florida vacation the wife and I took earlier this week, are the reasons for the delay in this discussion.

Review - HR 8772 Introduced – FY 2025 Legislative Spending

Last month, Rep Valadao (R,CA) introduced HR 8772, FY 2025 legislative spending. The bill provides for spending to support operations of the Congress of the United States. The bill contains one cybersecurity provision, and the report of the House Appropriations Committee that accompanies the bill contains two cybersecurity discussions.

Moving Forward

The House Rules Committee is scheduled to meet this afternoon to formulate the rule for the consideration of the bill. Thirty-six amendments have been proposed to the Committee. None of them are of specific interest here. This bill will pass later this week, probably along partisan lines. The Senate version of the bill has yet to be crafted, but that is the language that will be considered in the Senate if/when this bill is taken up by that body.

 

For more details about the cybersecurity coverage in this bill and report, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/hr-8772-introduced - subscription required.

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.

Bills Introduced – 6-17-24

Yesterday, with just the Senate in session, there were 13 bills introduced. Three of those bills will receive some attention in this blog:

HR 8772 Legislative Branch Appropriations Act, 2025 Valadao, David G. [Rep.-R-CA-22]

HR 8773 Making appropriations for financial services and general government for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2025, and for other purposes. Joyce, David P. [Rep.-R-OH-14] 

HR 8774 Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2025 Calvert, Ken [Rep.-R-CA-41] 

It is unusual for the House to allow introduction of bills when the body is not in session, the most frequent exceptions to that rule are spending bills.

I do not typically find much to cover in the Legislative Branch or FinServices spending bills, but oddities to arise from time to time in the amendment process.