Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Thursday that he hopes cybersecurity legislation is brought up again in the Senate.
McConnell said he opposed a cloture motion on the Cybersecurity Act, S. 3414, Wednesday night because Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) wouldn’t allow an open amendment process. Reid had said he’d allow a “finite” number of Republican amendments.
After the motion failed Wednesday, Reid said the bill was “dead for this Congress.”
“A bill that was and is most important to national security was just killed and that’s cybersecurity,” Reid said. “Cybersecurity is dead for this Congress.”
McConnell said that he hopes there is an open amendment process on the Defense Authorization Act — the next piece of legislation the Senate will take up. He said after that he’d like to bring cybersecurity up again for consideration.
“The Senate will hopefully move to a full and open debate of the National Defense Authorization Act,” McConnell said on the Senate floor Thursday. “During the time that the bill is considered on the floor, and I do expect that bill to be subject to an open amendment process, my hope is that the Majority Leader will work with me to reach an agreement on allowing a debate on cybersecurity legislation with Republican amendments in order, especially since the ranking members of the Armed Services, Intelligence, Commerce, and Judiciary committees are all co-sponsors of a cybersecurity bill that needs to be considered as part of this debate.
“My expectation is that sometime in December after we have completed floor debate on the Defense Authorization bill, and then dispose of the Intelligence Authorization bill, we will then attempt to get an agreement on amendments to the cybersecurity bill.”
The Cybersecurity Act would have encouraged companies that operate critical infrastructure to boost the security of their computer systems.
