HR 8774 Reported - FY 2025 DOD Spending
Last week the House Appropriations Committee published their report for HR 8774, the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2025 and the reported version of the text of the bill. There are limited mentions of cybersecurity in the bill (none of interest here) and no mentions of chemical issues beyond continued spending for the destruction of chemical munitions. There are discussions of both topics in the Report.
The House Rules Committee is scheduled to meet on Tuesday to formulate the rule for the consideration of three spending bills, including HR 8774. There have been 401 amendments submitted to the Rules Committee to date for consideration in the debate on the DHS spending bill; three cybersecurity amendments of possible interest here. The bill is scheduled to be considered by the Full House this coming week.
Chemical Discussion
There are two chemical safety related discussion in the report:
Chemical Supply Chain and Environmental Protection Agency Engagement (Pgs 172-3), and
Peer-Reviewed Toxic Exposures Research Program (Pg 257)
The first deals with the EPA’s on-going chemical substance reviews under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). The Committee urges DOD to “detail the necessity for, and uses of, such chemicals during fiscal year 2026 budget reviews and implications to the Department and defense industrial base stemming from the EPA’s risk evaluation.” The second is concerns $30-million that the Committee has allocated for “research projects of clear scientific merit and direct relevance to military exposures to toxic substances, including toxic industrial chemicals, materials, metals, and minerals.”
Cybersecurity Discussion
There are two cybersecurity related discussions in the report:
Cybersecurity Risks from Commercial Information Technology (Pg 25), and
National Centers of Academic Excellence in Cybersecurity (Pg 245)
The first deals with a recent GAO report, with the Committee encouraging DOD to “fully implement all recommendations outlined in the Government Accountability Office report GAO–23–105612 [link added] and take swift action to expand reviews on components used in end-use commercial information technology and hardware-encrypted data storage products.” The second deals with the additional $25-million that the Committee allocated to the National Centers of Academic Excellence in Cybersecurity (NCAE–C) program to “sustain NCAE–C broad agency announcement grants to centers of academic excellence to promote cybersecurity workforce development initiatives, advanced cyber research, and K–12 pipelines.”
Amendments Proposed
Over 400 amendments have been proposed to the House Rules Committee for potential consideration during the House action on this bill. These include:
Moving Forward
This is another partisan spending bill that will receive little or no support from Democrats. The Republicans will have to pass the rule for the consideration of this bill in the House Rules Committee and then maintain party discipline on the floor for the legislation to pass.
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 8774. 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.