HR 7147 and HR 7148 Passed in House –
Yesterday the House took up the last two spending bills, HR 7147 and HR 7148. After passing the rule for the consideration of the two bills (H Ress 1014) by an expected party-line vote of 214 to 213, they first considered HR 7148, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2026 (covering DOD, LHH, and THUD spending). After rejecting the two proposed amendments authorized by the rule, the House passed HR 7148 by a bipartisan vote of 341 to 88 (24 Republicans and 64 Democrats voting Nay). The House then took up HR 7147, the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2026. They passed that bill by a near party-line vote of 220 to 207 (1 Republican voting Nay and 7 Democrats voting Yeah).
Extenders
HR 7148 contained two Divisions related to extending legislative dates that are set to expire on January 30th, 2026 along with the current Continuing Resolution. The Division F, Healthcare Extenders, provides nothing of interest here. Division E, however, contains three extensions (to September 30th, 2026) of specific interest here:
6 USC 1525 – Federal Cybersecurity Enhancement,
6 USC 1510 – Cybersecurity Information Sharing, and
6 USC 665g – State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program
The extension of 6 USC 124n, Protection of certain facilities and assets from unmanned aircraft, that was included in HR 5371 (the current CR), is not included in this bill. That is because §8602, Drone countermeasures to protect public safety and critical infrastructure, of S 1071, the FY 2026 NDAA (PL116-60), rewrote §124n and extended the authorization of that revised section through September 30th, 2031.
Legislative Poison Pills
There has been some concern that HR 7147 could not be passed in the House. Ignoring concerns about recent operations of ICE, there was no language added to the bill that would restrict ongoing extreme immigration enforcement actions of ICE and CBP. The House Rules Committee addressed this issue by including in H Res 1071 §4: “The Clerk shall not transmit to the Senate a message that the House has passed H.R. 7148 until H.R. 7147 is passed by the House.” It is not clear if this was a contributing factor in the passage of HR 7147.
To overcome opposition in the Senate to the language of HR 7147, H Res 1071 directed the Clerk of the House to add to the approved language of HR 7148, the language of both HR 7147 and HR 7006, the third FY 2026 minibuss, that had passed in the House last week. Thus, HR 7148 will cover 7 of the 12 spending bills for FY 2026. If the Senate does not pass HR 4178 next week, there will be another shutdown of a very large portion of the federal government.