S 1605 Passed in Senate – FY 2022 NDAA

Today the Senate took up the House amendment to S 1605 that would change that bill into the FY 2022 National Defense Authorization Act. The Senate concurred with the House amendment by a bipartisan vote of 88 to 11. Three of the ‘nay’ votes were recorded by Republicans, so it was bipartisan on both sides of the issue. The President is expected to sign the bill.

As I explained in my Substack article (subscription required) about the House version of this bill, Title XIV, Cyberspace Related Matters, contains two subtitles of DOD related cyber provisions which are generally not of interest to people outside of DOD or the Defense Industrial Base. Subtitle C of that Title, however, contains 12 sections related to federal cybersecurity. Those sections include language similar to the following pieces of legislation that I have previously described:

§1541 - HR 1833,

§1542 - HR 2980,

§1543 - HR 118,

§1547 - HR 3223, and

§1551 - HR 2659

House Passes S 1605 – FY 2022 NDAA

Last night the House passed S 1605, the FY 2022 National Defense Authorization Act by a bipartisan vote of 363 to 70. As I predicted the Nay vote was also bipartisan; 51 Democrats and 19 Republicans. The Senate may not take this bill up this week, though a weekend session is not out of the question.

The bill does contain several cybersecurity provisions (subscription required), but not a cyberattack reporting requirement.

Senate bomb throwers {most recently Sen Rubio (R,FL)} should note that while Senate rules generally allow them to hold-up legislation to get votes on their pet amendments, they cannot push that too far since the rules can be manipulated to bypass them if the bill is important enough and has wide enough support.

It also appears that the leadership took a mild swipe at Sen Scott (R,FL) because of his delay in negotiating the inclusion of the cyberattack reporting requirement (see this article). The original S 1605 was a bill sponsored by Scott. The language of the original bill could have been included in the substitute language, but it was kept out.

Review - House Considering S 1605 – New FY 2022 NDAA

This evening the House will be taking up S 1605, a bill to designate the National Pulse Memorial in Orlando, FL. Instead of the language adopted in the Senate, the House will consider substitute language making the bill the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022. If, as expected, this bill passes tonight in the House, the Senate will take up the bill under the abbreviated processes (no further amendments) used to accept a House amendment to a Senate passed bill.

The bill was crafted in much the same way as a conference committee would do after the two houses of Congress passed separate versions of a bill. Instead of an appointed conference committee (which for an NDAA would be mainly the Armed Services Committees supplemented by committee representatives for significant non-defense matters included in the bill), this substitute language was crafted by essentially just the Armed Services Committees using the House passed version of HR 4350 and the Senate Amendment SA 3867 substitute language from the Senate. There has been a Joint Explanatory Statement published which explains how the bill was crafted.

As I write this, the House is actively debating HR 1605 with one hour set aside for this debate. Various procedural matters will follow. The House expects to vote on this bill later tonight. I expect that it will pass with some level of bipartisan support (and bipartisan opposition).

For more details about the cybersecurity provisions included in the bill, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/house-considering-s-1605-new-fy-2022 - subscription required.