Review - HR 5371 Amended and Passed in Senate – FY 2026 CR

Yesterday the Senate finally completed action on HR 5371, the Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2026. By votes of 60 to 40, the Senate adopted the substitute language from the Senate Appropriations Committee and then passed the amended bill. The revised language would extend the current spending through January 30^th, 2026 and would pass the three spending bills earlier adopted by the Senate when it passed HR 3944, the FY 2026 MilCon spending bill in August. The revised bill gets a new title of the “Continuing Appropriations, Agriculture, Legislative Branch, Military Construction and Veterans Affairs, and Extensions Act, 2026”.

Moving Forward

Reportedly, the House will be in session tomorrow (still not on the Majority Leader’s calendar) to vote on this bill, violating a whole bunch of promises not to force members to vote on spending bills without adequate time to review the provisions. It appears that the Democratic leadership in the House is trying to convince members to not vote for this bill while their requested ACA subsidies are still not included. This may be important because there could be a number of Republican holdouts that will not want to vote for this bill because of the bipartisan language (and spending allocations) in the three spending bills. It is possible that this Senate deal will not be acceptable to a majority in the House, depending on how well their conference can  hold the Democrats together in opposition.

BTW: The Senate has left town for their Veterans Day Recess. They are scheduled to return to Washington on Tuesday, November 18^th, 2025.

 

For more information on the provisions of this bill, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/hr-5371-amended-and-passed-in-senate - subscription required.

HR 3944 Considered in Senate – MilCon Spending – 7-22-25

Yesterday the Senate began consideration of HR 3944, the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act with a vote to begin consideration, with a strongly bipartisan vote of 91 to 7. That vote does not signal support for the partisan spending bill passed in the House, but rather showed support for moving forward on the spending bill process.

Twelve amendments to HR 3944 were proposed yesterday. The most important will probably be SA 2976 introduced by Sen Collins (R,ME). This should be the substitute language from the Senate Appropriations Committee that probably form the basis for the Senate debate on HR 3944. It includes, as Division B, the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2026 (taken from S 2256), and, as Division C, Legislative Branch Appropriations Act, 2026 (taken from S 2257).

If this bill manages to pass in the Senate, it will do so with at least some bipartisan (60 votes needed for passage) support. That means that there will be spending levels and other provisions (or lack of provisions) that will make it lose significant support from radical Republicans in the House. That would mean the amended bill would require bipartisan support in the House to be sent to the President. That could cause problems for Speaker Johnson, both with the Republican fringe and the President.

Review – S 2257 Introduced – FY 2026 Legislative Spending

Last week Sen Mullins (R,OK) introduced S 2257, the FY 2026 Legislative Branch spending bill. The Senate Appropriations Committee also published their Report on the bill. There are no cybersecurity mentions in the bill, but there are five discussions about cybersecurity issues in the Report. There is one drone restriction in the bill, but no related discussions in the Report.

This bill is similar to S 4678, the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act, 2025, that was introduced by Sen Reed (D,RI) in July, 2024. No action was taken on that bill in the Senate. That is not unusual since the Senate typically takes up the House version of spending bills, and then substitutes language from their bill, but the Senate did not take up HR 8772  (the House version) either.

Moving Forward

As I mentioned above, this bill (as such) will never be considered by the Senate. If the Senate does take up the House version, it would be expected to substitute language from this bill. It is too early to tell what the chances are of the Senate taking up this (or any of the other 11) spending bills this session.

Commentary

The Appropriations Committee continues to ignore unique cybersecurity needs of the operational networks (surveillance, access control, and building systems) on Capital Hill. This is not unexpected, given how the cybersecurity needs of these systems are rather poorly addressed in general, but it would have been interesting to see the Committee requiring the GAO to prepare a report on the cybersecurity status and needs of these systems. A really impressive report would include a classified annex listing all of the unpatched vulnerabilities in those systems.

 

For additional information on the provisions of this bill, including expanded commentary, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/s-2257-introduced-fy-2026-legislative - subscription required.

Review - Bills Introduced – 7-10-25

Yesterday, with the Senate in Washington and the House meeting in pro forma session, there were 105 bills introduced. Three of those bills may receive additional coverage in this blog:

HR 4344 To direct the Secretary of the Air Force to carry out a capability demonstration project to obtain a resilient positioning, navigation, and timing capability demonstration, and for other purposes. Mullin, Kevin [Rep.-D-CA-15]

S 2257 An original bill making appropriations for the Legislative Branch for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2026, and for other purposes. Mullin, Markwayne [Sen.-R-OK]

S 2256 An original bill making appropriations for Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2026, and for other purposes. Hoeven, John [Sen.-R-ND]

 

For more information on these bills, including legislative history for similar bills in the 118th, as well as a Space Geek bill and a Chinese vehicle bill mentioned in passing, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/bills-introduced-7-10-25 - subscription required.