Last month, Rep Lieu (D,CA) introduced HR 4389, the New Collar Jobs Act of 2021. The bill would provide employer incentives to provide cybersecurity training to employees and would provide federal loan forgiveness to certain individuals student loans. No monies are authorized by this bill.
Definitions
While the bill does not provide any definitions for the entire scope of the bill, it does add a definition for the term ‘cybersecurity job’ to 20 USC 1087e, the William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan Program.
Employer Benefits for Cybersecurity Training
Section 3 of the bill adds a new §45U to the Internal Revenue Code of 1986. It would provide a 50% employee cybersecurity education credit for up to $5,000 per employee per year for qualified employee cybersecurity education expenses.
Section 7 of the bill would require changes to Subpart 15.3 of the Federal Acquisition Regulation to provide a 5% score increase for competitive contract proposals from offerors who claimed the cybersecurity training credit described above at least once in the previous three years.
Cybersecurity Incentives for Individuals
Section 4 of the bill would amend 20 USC 1087e by adding a new subsection (r), Loan repayment for cybersecurity workers in economically distressed area. Qualified individuals could have up to $25,000 of the balance of the principal and interest on their William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan Program loan forgiven.
Section 5 of the bill would amend 15 USC 7442, the Federal Cyber Scholarship-for-Service Program, by adding ‘cybersecurity course instructors’ to the list of future jobs in §7442(a) to be targeted by Cybercorps Scholarship for Service program. Similarly, it adds the same as one of the cybersecurity positions that would fulfil the obligation requirements of §7442(d). Finally, it removes the 80% job placement in federal agencies requirement.
Moving Forward
Neither Lieu, nor his three cosponsors are members of any of the four committees to which this bill was assigned for consideration. This means that the bill is unlikely to be considered in any of the committees. I see nothing in this bill that would engender any organized opposition and I suspect that if it were considered, that it would receive at least some level of bipartisan support.
Commentary
It is interesting that, with Lieu and one of his cosponsors of this bill both being on the House Appropriations Committee, the bill does not include the authorization for any funds. Instead, in two separate places, it uses the phrase ‘it is the sense of the Congress that’ to introduce a recommendation that funding for programs be increased. They could have used the phrase ‘golly gosh, we would really like to see’ and it would have had the same effect, none.
Section 2 of the bill presents the ‘Findings’ that purportedly drive the crafters of the bill. In this case, the section makes much about industrial control systems being important to the economy and the sharp rise in ‘industrial automation and control system cyber-incidents’. There is nothing, however, in the bill that could be considered an attempt to deal with that specific problem.
Oh well, it is a pretty bill that is almost certainly going no where except to be mentioned in speeches at campaign fundraising events.