HR 8572 Reported in House
FY 2025 DHS Spending Bill
Last week, the House Appropriations Committee published their report for HR 8572, the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2025 and the text of the reported version of the bill. There is on specific cybersecurity language or chemical security language in the bill. The report contains discussions about both, but no mention of the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) program.
The House Rules Committee is scheduled to meet on Tuesday to formulate the rule for the consideration of three spending bills, including HR 8572. There have been 232 amendments submitted to the Rules Committee to date for consideration in the debate on the DHS spending bill; two of possible interest here. One is a CFATS amendment that does not extend the program. The second is a cybersecurity amendment to increase funding for research on preventing cyberattacks. The bill is scheduled to be considered by the Full House this coming week.
Spending Bill Items of Interest
As I noted above, there is no language related to chemical security or cybersecurity in the bill itself. I have extracted some of the spending numbers that may be of interest here, along with comparisons to the version of the FY 2024 spending bill reported in the House last year. This allows for a look at how the Appropriations Committee has changed their DHS outlook over time.
Chemical Mentions in the Report
Again, the CFATS program is not mentioned in the Report. The spending table on page 150 of the report (note all page numbers are the .pdf reader page numbers) does provide spending numbers for ‘Chemical Security’ and ‘Chemical Inspectors’ under CISA’s Infrastructure Security spending. The CFATS funding comes from these two accounts. The table below shows the comparable numbers from the reports on the two previous DHS spending bills reported in the House. Please note that the two earlier bills reflected ‘full funding’ for the CFATS program.
While the CFATS program is not mentioned, the Chemical Inspectors that support the program are mentioned in the discussion about Regional Security Advisors on page 67. That discussion notes:
“The Committee is also aware that CISA is considering cross-training chemical inspectors with other security advisor skills. Within 90 days of the date of enactment of this Act, CISA shall brief the Committee with representatives from the regional offices on efforts to fill these [security advisor] vacancies and a plan for chemical inspector cross-training and budget implications to do so.”
The final chemical security related discussion in the report is found in the S&T section and refers to the Chemical Security Analysis Center (CSAC) and its work with the U.S. Army’s Chemical and Biological Center. The report notes (pg 81):
“Within the funds provided, S&T is encouraged to evaluate the cyber and physical infrastructure vulnerabilities of domestic chemical manufacturing facilities critical to military energetics programs.”
Proposed Chemical Amendments
There has not been an amendment proposed to extend the expiration date for the CFATS program like we saw for the National Defense Authorization bill earlier this month. This is likely due to the restrictions on authorization language in spending bill. This was specifically noted in the Rules Committee announcement for HR 8752:
“The Rules Committee will not make in order amendments that are in violation of House rules or budget rules and would require a waiver, including clause 2 of Rule XXI, which prevents authorizing on an appropriations bill. If you have any questions, please contact Ashlee Bierworth of the Committee staff at Ashlee.Bierworth@mail.house.gov or at 202-225-9191.”
To be fair, this notice is found in Rules Committee notices for all spending bills (see for instance the announcement for HR 8774, the DOD spending bill). As with most other House Rules, the leadership can ignore or waive the rules whenever they want, but it does not appear that that will occur this year.
There is, however, a CFATS related amendment that was the last submitted; Rep Garbarino (R,NY) proposed amendment #233. It would require CISA to “to set aside $70 million of its total budget to administer the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards.”
Cybersecurity Discussions
As should be expected with CISA being the lead agency for cybersecurity in the federal government, there are a large number of cybersecurity related discussions in the Report. Those of interest here include:
Defense capabilities – defense of critical infrastructure from ‘foreign adversary’ cyberattacks, (pg 62),
Critical infrastructure program – prioritizing CIP spending to Energy, Water and Wastewater Systems, Communications, Transportation Systems, and Financial Services sectors, Pg 63,
CIRCIA – Increased spending, $33,381,000 above FY 2024, for CIRCIA requirements, Pgs 63-4,
Cyber Sensor Capabilities – CISA encouraged to continue providing development support for real-time monitoring; advanced warning of threats, including Advanced Persistent Threats (APT); and detection of attacks on Operational Technology (OT) systems, Pg 64,
Operational Technology – Requires report on CISA’s continuing efforts to protect federal OT and industrial control systems, Pg 65,
Red Teaming – Encouraging CISA to support pen testing and red teaming activities for government agencies and critical infrastructure companies, Pg 65, and
Small Manufacturing Cybersecurity Support – Encouraging CISA to DOD and NIST small manufacturing cybersecurity efforts, Pgs 65-6.
With 233 amendments proposed to the Rules Committee, it is surprising that there is only one proposed amendment that addresses cybersecurity issues; amendment #52, submitted by Rep Buchanan (R,FL) which would add $3 million to S&T spending to “increase research into the prevention of cyberattacks.”
Moving Forward
It is clear from the ‘Minority Views’ portion (pgs 173-5) of the Committee Report that HR 8752 as written and reported is a very partisan bill. If it passes it will be by a narrow, nearly party-line vote. Thus, it will have to be considered under a rule to be crafted by the Rules Committee, what is not yet clear is if it is partisan enough to get at least two of the three radical Republican votes in that Committee and avoids Republican votes against the rule on Wednesday.
As with all spending bills, the language of this bill will never make it in the Senate. Even when the two bodies are ideologically closer, the Senate will consider their own version of the bill (not yet crafted by the Senate Appropriations Committee) as substitute language for HR 8752. Theoretically, a conference committee will work out the differences between the two versions of the bill. What is more likely is that in the last week of September, a continuing resolution will keep the current spending levels for sometime into the future.
The big question is how far into the future, and who will write the final bill, it could be next year with a Republican Congress and a Trump Administration. If the Democrats win in November, it will be a lame duck congress that writes the bill in December.