3rd FY 2026 Minibus Announced – FinServices and State

Yesterday the two appropriations committees separately (Senate and House)announced the proposed language for the third minibus spending bill for FY 2026, covering Financial Services and General Government, and National Security, Department of State, and Related Programs. The House Rules Committee also announced that they would hold a rule hearing on Tuesday that would include the new spending bill. The bill will be introduced later today and be assigned an HR number at that time. There is an interesting ‘minority view’ of the bill from the Senate Democrats.

The proposed bill consists of three divisions:

DIVISION A – Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act, 2026,

DIVISION B – National  Security, Department of State, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2026, and

DIVISION C – Other  Matters

The ‘other matters’ division is relatively short. It would prohibit funding for United Nations Relief and Works Agency. I suspect that it was added as a separate division instead of being combined with Division B, so that a separate vote could be held on this provision. This would have been included in the bill as an enticement for the spending hawks.

As with HR 6938, this bill will be treated as a conference bill, with Joint Explanatory Statements available for each division. Again, I would not be surprised to see separate votes on retaining each of the three divisions.

If this bill is passed, and I expect that it will, there will be just three spending bills left to consider:

Homeland Security,

Labor-HHS-Education, and

Transportation-HUD.

These three bills would contain the most controversial programs and spending topics and will be the most difficult to produce a consensus version which could pass in both the House and Senate. It is very likely that Congress will have to resort to a continuing resolution with current funding continuing through September 30^th, 2026.

Rule for HR 6938 – FY 2026 2nd Minibus

Yesterday, the House Rules Committee completed their work on the rule for consideration of HR 6938, the Commerce, Justice, Science; Energy and Water Development; and Interior and Environment Appropriations Act, 2026. That rule, H Res 977, addresses the consideration of three bills, but sections 3 thru 6 apply directly to the spending bill.

Section 4 of the rule provides for an unusual voting process for the bill. After the limited debate on the bill, the House will conduct two procedural votes. The first will determine if Division A (CJS spending provisions) will be retained in HR 6938. The second will determine if Divisions B and C will be retained. As long as at least one division is retained, the House will then vote upon passage. This process would seem to indicate that there is significant opposition (at least in the Republican Caucus) to the CJS portion of bill. This gives those opposing that Division a chance to formally voice their opposition. I doubt that there will be sufficient votes to remove Division A from the bill.

The House took up H Res 977 yesterday. After the pro forma debate the recorded debate was conducted. The Republican leadership needed to do some on-the-floor arm twisting on an extended vote to get passage on a straight party-line vote of 214 to 212.

Debate on the bill and votes are scheduled for this afternoon.

2nd FY 2024 Spending Minibus Published – 3-20-24

Late last night the House Appropriations Committee published the 2^nd FY 2024 spending minibus. As with the earlier spending bill, this takes the form of a House Resolution (not yet numbered as it will be introduced today) providing a House amendment to the Senate amendment to a previously passed House bill (HR 2882, the Udall Foundation Reauthorization Act of 2023). A committee print of the resolution is available.

There is no mention of an extension/reinstatement of the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) program in the text of the bill. There is, however, an odd comment about the program in the Division C (DHS) Joint Explanatory Statement (pg 38):

“The agreement includes $15,077,000 below the request for Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) due to cost savings within the program.”

Since the Appropriations Committee Report (H Rept 118-123) provided $41 million for ‘Chemical Security’ (table on page 170), it looks like this bill will continue some level of funding for the program through the end of September. So the program may yet be resurrectable.

It is unlikely that the resolution will be brought to the floor of the House today (it is not listed on the Majority Leader’s schedule for today) and only slightly more likely for tomorrow. This means that another short-term continuing resolution will be required to stop a government shutdown on Saturday.

Senate Begins Consideration of HR 4366 (again) – First FY 2024 Minibus

Yesterday, after the House passed H Res 1061 and sent HR 4366, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2024, back to the Senate with an amendment turning the bill into a six-bill minibus spending bill, the Senate began consideration of the amendment. A cloture motion was filed “to close further debate on the motion to concur in the amendment of the House to the amendment of the Senate to the bill”. The vote on that amendment is slated for later today.

HR 4336 Considered in Senate – FY 2024 MilCon Spending – 9-11-23

Other than a short speech by Sen Schumer (D,NY), about the bipartisan process moving HR 4336 (the first minibus spending bill) forward, the Senate took no action on the floor on that legislation. The expected first cloture vote did not happen. This could have been due to a priorities issue in a short session, or there could be threats to the bipartisan support for the bill, that require additional negotiations. The orders for today’s session did not include any mention of HR 4336, but that is not an impediment to Senate action.

One amendment (SA 1093) was proposed for the bill, nothing of specific interest here.

Commentary

Schumer needs substantial bipartisan support for this bill to be used as a bludgeon in the inevitable conference committee to beat back the more radical elements of the House version of the bill, especially the final spending number. I expect that we will see a larger than usual number of amendments by moderate Republicans brought to the floor for successful votes in the coming days.

Senate Begins Consideration of HR 4366 – FY 2024 MilCon Spending

Yesterday, the Senate began consideration of HR 4366, the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2024. A cloture motion was filed to bring to a close debate on the motion to proceed to HR 4366. An agreement was reached to vote on the cloture motion on Monday evening. A positive vote on that motion would allow the amendment offering process to begin.

One amendment was proposed yesterday for HR 4366 yesterday, SA 1092. It was offered by Sen Murray (D,WA), Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee. The amendment offers substitute language for the bill, changing the name to the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2024. It includes language from the following Senate bills:

• Division A, S 2127, Military Construction-Veterans Affairs,

• Division B, S 2131, Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2024 (ARD), and

• Division C, S 2437, Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2024 (THUD).

The bipartisan nature of the spending bills passed out of the Senate Appropriations Committee means that the Senate will likely pass this consolidated spending bill after considering some number of amendments. The bill would then go back to the House for an up or down vote on the Senate amendments to HR 4366 and the House will almost certainly insist on it’s more limited version of the bill. The actual fight in the House over the provisions in the bill will only really start once the conference committee reports back a further modified version of the bill, which will again typically receive an up or down vote in the House and Senate.

There remains a very real possibility that the conference version of the bill will be essentially killed in the House Rules Committee where the Republican 11 have (probably) three votes out of thirteen. If each of the four Democrats vote against the conference report rule (historically typical) then the three radical Republican votes could block the bill from moving to the House floor. If a deal is reached, however, between moderate Republicans and at least two of the Democrats on the Committee, the bill would move to the Floor for consideration. This would get the bill passed on the floor of the House, but would cause problems for Speaker McCarthy (R,CA).

NOTE: I will be reporting on the cybersecurity and chemical safety provisions of S 2437 this weekend.

HR 8294 Passed in House – FY 2023 Minibus Spending Bill

Yesterday, the House completed consideration of HR 8294, the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, Agriculture, Rural Development, Energy and Water Development, Financial Services and General Government, Interior, Environment, Military Construction, and Veterans Affairs Appropriations Act, 2023. This minibus spending bill includes six spending bills (HR 8294-THUD, HR 8239-ARD, HR 8255-EWR, HR 8254-FSGG, HR 8262-IER, and HR 8238-MC&VA). The bill passed on a party line vote of 220 to 207.

A large number of the 190 proposed amendments were adopted, mostly in en bloc votes. There were no cybersecurity, chemical transportation or UAS amendments proposed.

The bill now goes to the Senate for consideration. With no spending bills published by the Senate Appropriations Committee, there are no substitute languages currently available to begin Senate consideration. With the party-line vote, the Senate is unlikely to take up the House language for consideration. This bill is unlikely to be considered in the Senate.

HR 7617 Reported in House – FY2021 DOD Spending

Earlier this month the House Appropriations Committee published their marked-up version of HR 7617, the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2021, and their Report on the bill. There is only one specific cyber mention in the bill, but there are a number of mentions of cyber related topics in the report; none specifically addressing control system security issues.

Cyber in HR 7617

While cyber operations are becoming a bigger part of overall military operations there is only one mention of the term ‘cyber’ in HR 7617. In §8125(a)(7) ‘Defensive Cyber Operations Army’ are mentioned as a potential target for funding for software development funds under the Research, Development, Test and Evaluation spending authorization.

Cyber Training

Various training initiatives are addressed in the Committee Report. Most of the mentions include a requirement to report back to the Committee on the progress of the related program. These mentions include:

• Pgs 10-11 - Civilian cyber workforce,

• Pg 32 - Cybersecurity professionals,

• Pg 320 - Cyber education collaboratives, and

• Pg 322 - Women and minorities in stem pipeline.

There are three rather vanilla mentions of cybersecurity processes in the Report. They include:

• Pg 113 - Standards and protocols on countering cybersecurity incidents,

• Pg 113 - Zero trust architecture, and

• Pg 318 - Distributed ledger technology research and development.

There is only one place in the Report where specific funding is mentioned in relation to cybersecurity processes, on page 325, under Arsenal Security. It states:

“The Committee believes that maintaining security, including threats from cyber-attacks, data piracy, and other technological risks, of Department of Defense arsenals is essential. The Committee directs that of the funds included under Industrial Operations, $3,500,000 is to implement efforts to combat these types of threats.”

Moving Forward

This bill will be used as the base for the second minibus spending bill in the House. The House Rules Committee will meet on Tuesday to set the rule for the consideration of the bill on the floor of the House, to include a list of which amendments will be authorized to be submitted from the floor. There have been 110 amendments for this portion of the bill submitted to the Rules Committee.

At this point it is not yet clear that the Democrats have the votes to pass the second minibus. They certainly have a majority in the House, but it is potential ‘no votes’ from the progressive wing of the party that could disable this bill. The problem is not the DOD portion of the bill, but rather a failure to ‘adequately sanction’ ICS and CBP in the DHS portion of the bill that would be the reason for the ‘Nays’.

The Rules Committee meeting has already been delayed one-day to add time to resolve this issue. Pelosi is aware that the Party needs support of the recently elected moderates that allowed the Democrats to take control of the House, so the DHS provisions cannot be too extreme. The Progressives, on the other hand, need to have strong punitive measures in the bill to appease their supporters.

The easy solution is to follow the example of last year, leave the DHS spending bill on the Committee floor and not consider it on the floor of the House. The resolution would then be left to the conference committee that would essentially craft a compromise spending omnibus spending bill before year end. And yes, an omnibus bill is almost a foregone conclusion; the Senate has not yet even been able to craft a single spending bill in Committee and the ‘August Recess’ is fast approaching (though, to be sure that recess may still be a victim of the COVID-19 disruption).

Senate Begins Consideration of HR 3055 – First Senate Minibus Spending Bill

Yesterday the Senate began consideration of HR 3055. This was the second FY 2020 spending minibus passed by the House back in June. As is typical for spending bills, the first amendment to be proposed for this bill in the Senate is the substitute language from the Senate Appropriations Committee; SA 948.

This amendment would only have the Senate version consider four of the five divisions included in the House version. The Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act will be included in a later spending bill. The Senate leadership hopes that the remaining four divisions have a low enough controversy level that they will be able to be passed and sent to the House for conference with some hope of the bill actually making its way to the President’s desk before November 21^st; the end date of the current continuing resolution.

My quick review of the 43 pages this bill took up in yesterday’s Congressional Record did not turn up anything worth talking about here. Below is a quick table of contents for the bill if you are interested in looking for something in particular; please forgive the all-CAPS format, it is a simple copy and past job and I have no desire to go back and put it into a more reasonable case structure. NOTE: the 'Sxxxx numbers' are CR page numbers.

Senate Amendment 948

DIVISION A—COMMERCE AND JUSTICE, SCIENCE, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2020 [S5978]

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE [S5978]

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE [S5981]

SCIENCE [S5986]

RELATED AGENCIES [S5988]

DIVISION B—AGRICULTURE, RURAL DEVELOPMENT, FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION, AND RELATED AGENCIES [S5991]

AGRICULTURAL PROGRAMS [S5991]

FARM PRODUCTION AND CONSERVATION PROGRAMS [S5994]

RURAL DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS [S5995]

DOMESTIC FOOD PROGRAMS [S5997]

FOREIGN ASSISTANCE AND RELATED PROGRAMS [S5998]

RELATED AGENCY AND FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION [S5998]

GENERAL PROVISIONS [S5999]

DIVISION C—DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, ENVIRONMENT, AND RELATED

AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2020 [S6003]

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR [S6003]

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY [S6011]

RELATED AGENCIES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE [S6013]

DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES [S6015]

GENERAL PROVISIONS [S6018]

DIVISION D—TRANSPORTATION, AND HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2020 [S6020]

TITLE I DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION [S6020]

FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION [S6022]

FEDERAL HIGHWAY ADMINISTRATION [S6023]

FEDERAL MOTOR CARRIER SAFETY ADMINISTRATION [S6025]

NATIONAL HIGHWAY TRAFFIC SAFETY ADMINISTRATION [S6026]

FEDERAL RAILROAD ADMINISTRATION [S6026]

FEDERAL TRANSIT ADMINISTRATION [S6027]

MARITIME ADMINISTRATION [S6028]

PIPELINE AND HAZARDOUS MATERIALS SAFETY ADMINISTRATION [S6029]

PIPELINE SAFETY [S6029]

TITLE II DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT [S6030]

TITLE III RELATED AGENCIES [S6041]

HR 2740 Passes in House – First FY 2020 Minibus

On Wednesday the House passed HR 2740, the first FY 2020 minibus spending bill by a vote of 226 to 203; a near party-line vote with seven Democrats voting Nay. A large number of amendments were adopted in two en bloc votes, including the Walberg amendment that I discussed earlier. That amendment would add $7 million to the Cybersecurity, Energy Security, And Emergency Response (CESER) spending account in the Department of Energy.

When (if?) the Senate takes up HR 2740, it will substitute language from the appropriate Senate spending bills for the language in the House bill. To move the bill to the President a conference committee would have to work out compromise language that would subsequently be passed by both the House and Senate. The ‘(if?)’ is because the Republicans in the Senate are still trying to work out a budget deal with the House and President that would set the spending caps for FY 2020. The Senate might not take up spending bills until that deal is reached.