Expanding Cybersecurity Workforce Act of 2025
Download PDFSponsored by
Rep. Brown, Shontel M. [D-OH-11]
ID: B001313
Bill's Journey to Becoming a Law
Track this bill's progress through the legislative process
Latest Action
Referred to the House Committee on Homeland Security.
December 4, 2025
Introduced
Committee Review
đź“Ť Current Status
Next: The bill moves to the floor for full chamber debate and voting.
Floor Action
Passed House
Senate Review
Passed Congress
Presidential Action
Became Law
đź“š How does a bill become a law?
1. Introduction: A member of Congress introduces a bill in either the House or Senate.
2. Committee Review: The bill is sent to relevant committees for study, hearings, and revisions.
3. Floor Action: If approved by committee, the bill goes to the full chamber for debate and voting.
4. Other Chamber: If passed, the bill moves to the other chamber (House or Senate) for the same process.
5. Conference: If both chambers pass different versions, a conference committee reconciles the differences.
6. Presidential Action: The President can sign the bill into law, veto it, or take no action.
7. Became Law: If signed (or if Congress overrides a veto), the bill becomes law!
Bill Summary
Another exercise in legislative theater, courtesy of the 119th Congress. Let's dissect this farce and expose the underlying disease.
**Main Purpose & Objectives**
The Expanding Cybersecurity Workforce Act of 2025 (HR 6429) claims to promote the cybersecurity field to disadvantaged communities, including older individuals, racial and ethnic minorities, people with disabilities, and others. Sounds noble, but let's not be naive. The real objective is to funnel $20 million in taxpayer dollars into a program that will likely benefit a select few, while providing a PR boost for the sponsors.
**Key Provisions & Changes to Existing Law**
The bill establishes a new program within the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to promote cybersecurity education and training. It also authorizes $20 million in annual appropriations from 2026 to 2031. The program will supposedly target disadvantaged communities, but the definitions of these terms are so broad that they might as well be meaningless.
**Affected Parties & Stakeholders**
The usual suspects: educators, unions, chambers of commerce, State and local workforce development offices, private sector entities, community colleges, parents of K-12 students, and other institutions. You know, the same people who will likely benefit from this program while the rest of us foot the bill.
**Potential Impact & Implications**
This bill is a classic case of "throwing money at a problem without solving it." The cybersecurity workforce gap is real, but this program won't address its root causes. Instead, it will create a new bureaucracy and provide a slush fund for favored stakeholders. The $20 million appropriation is a drop in the bucket compared to the billions spent on cybersecurity initiatives each year.
Now, let's follow the money trail:
* The bill's sponsors have received significant campaign contributions from tech companies, defense contractors, and cybersecurity firms. * CISA has already partnered with private sector entities to promote cybersecurity education and training. This program will likely expand those partnerships, creating a revolving door between government and industry. * The definitions of "disadvantaged communities" are so broad that they might as well include every demographic group in the country. This is a classic example of "legislative logrolling," where multiple stakeholders are included to build support for the bill.
Diagnosis: This bill suffers from a bad case of "Legislative Theater-itis," a disease characterized by grandiose language, vague objectives, and a complete lack of accountability. The symptoms include:
* A $20 million appropriation with no clear metrics for success * Overly broad definitions that will benefit favored stakeholders rather than the intended recipients * A lack of transparency in how the program will be implemented and evaluated
Treatment: Apply a healthy dose of skepticism and scrutiny to this bill. Demand clear objectives, measurable outcomes, and transparent implementation. And for goodness' sake, don't let politicians use your tax dollars as a slush fund for their pet projects.
Related Topics
đź’° Campaign Finance Network
Rep. Brown, Shontel M. [D-OH-11]
Congress 119 • 2024 Election Cycle
No PAC contributions found
No committee contributions found
Donor Network - Rep. Brown, Shontel M. [D-OH-11]
Hub layout: Politicians in center, donors arranged by type in rings around them.
Showing 28 nodes and 30 connections
Total contributions: $49,126
Top Donors - Rep. Brown, Shontel M. [D-OH-11]
Showing top 25 donors by contribution amount
Project 2025 Policy Matches
This bill shows semantic similarity to the following sections of the Project 2025 policy document. Higher similarity scores indicate stronger thematic connections.
Introduction
— 218 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise NATIONAL COUNTERINTELLIGENCE AND SECURITY CENTER (NCSC) The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) has taken a keen inter- est in possibly updating the codified language underpinning much of the nation’s counterintelligence apparatus. “Spy vs. spy” threats continue to exist, but the rise of China and (to an extent) Russia’s machinations move beyond the governmental sphere to technological, economic, supply chain, cyber, academic, state, and local espionage threats at a level our country has never seen. The asymmetric threat includes cyber, nontraditional collection, and issues involving legitimate busi- nesses serving as collection platforms. Barring statutory changes that could occur before 2025, a future conserva- tive President should further empower and resource the IC by executive order or through suggested changes in the Counterintelligence Enhancement Act (CEA) of 2002.32 NCSC was given some authority for outreach efforts on behalf of the IC for counterintelligence education, insider threats, and broader U.S. government best practices, but there remain significant deltas between Title 50 and non–Title 50 entities’ protections. Primary operational elements should remain at the FBI and CIA, with the Bureau and NCSC collaborating on nongovernmental outreach. While there is no need to create a separate agency, a future President and DNI should amplify NCSC’s authorities and roles with respect to counterintelligence strategy, policy, outreach, and governance, including supporting necessary Joint Duty Assignments (JDA) for FBI and CIA personnel. At the same time, the FBI requires significant additional resources and legal authorities to fulfill its statu- tory role as the lead operational counterintelligence agency in dealing with the ever-growing threats posed by our adversaries. The CEA should be updated to include foreign espionage efforts aimed at universities. Corporate America, technology companies, research institutions, and academia must be willing, educated partners in this generational fight to protect our national security interests, economic interests, national sovereignty, and intellectual prop- erty as well as the broader rules-based order—all while avoiding the tendency to cave to the left-wing activists and investors who ignore the China threat and increasingly dominate the corporate world. Reinstitution of the National Security Higher Education Advisory Board and the National Security Business Alliance Council should be prioritized with leadership from the NCSC, the FBI, or a com- bination of both entities. When the CCP steals at least $400 billion–$600 billion in intellectual prop- erty each year, it is time to devote some strategic thinking to exactly how and to what degree counterintelligence efforts can help to protect America’s commercial endeavors. If Chinese strategic technology gains are happening almost entirely in transnational commercial space, for example, and the private sector is also gath- ering and analyzing some critical intelligence, these essential data points should assist in national-level counterintelligence efforts. — 219 — Intelligence Community The NCSC was created in the aftermath of 9/11 as the Terrorist Threat Integra- tion Center (TTIC), which later became the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) pursuant to President George W. Bush’s Executive Order 13354.33 The NCTC was an organization of approximately three dozen detainees from across the U.S. government with a mandate to integrate counterterrorism intelligence and missions, including terrorist screening. Eventually: In November 2014 the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) established NCSC by combining [the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive] with the Center for Security Evaluation, the Special Security Center and the National Insider Threat Task Force, to effectively integrate and align counterintelligence and security mission areas under a single organizational construct. The Director of NCSC serves in support of the DNI’s role as Security Executive Agent (SecEA) to develop, implement, oversee and integrate personnel security initiatives throughout the U.S. Government.34 NCSC has added value in such areas as fusing cross-community intelligence for terrorism watchlisting purposes and improving information sharing while carrying roughly half of the overall cadre for the ODNI. An incoming Administration should focus NCTC on integrative tasks, many of which cannot be carried out elsewhere in the IC, but should not use personnel and resources for redundant analyses that duplicate the work of such other IC entities as the FBI and CIA. ADDITIONAL AREAS FOR REFORM Analytical Integrity. The “tradecraft” of intelligence analysis is mostly a col- lection of lessons learned over decades about what works and does not work in a profession whose high-stakes work is performed by thousands but that also bears little outside scrutiny and provides few metrics by which to gauge success or failure on a regular basis. These lessons have accumulated from: l The perceived misuse of intelligence by consumers as was the case with respect to war-related assessments in the Johnson and Bush Administrations; l Failures such as the failures to warn of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the specific threat of 9/11; l Successes in piecing together tactical and often technical puzzles such as estimates of Iranian nuclear program maturation; and l Strategic victories such as anticipating critical geopolitical developments that have been years in the making.
Introduction
— 218 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise NATIONAL COUNTERINTELLIGENCE AND SECURITY CENTER (NCSC) The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) has taken a keen inter- est in possibly updating the codified language underpinning much of the nation’s counterintelligence apparatus. “Spy vs. spy” threats continue to exist, but the rise of China and (to an extent) Russia’s machinations move beyond the governmental sphere to technological, economic, supply chain, cyber, academic, state, and local espionage threats at a level our country has never seen. The asymmetric threat includes cyber, nontraditional collection, and issues involving legitimate busi- nesses serving as collection platforms. Barring statutory changes that could occur before 2025, a future conserva- tive President should further empower and resource the IC by executive order or through suggested changes in the Counterintelligence Enhancement Act (CEA) of 2002.32 NCSC was given some authority for outreach efforts on behalf of the IC for counterintelligence education, insider threats, and broader U.S. government best practices, but there remain significant deltas between Title 50 and non–Title 50 entities’ protections. Primary operational elements should remain at the FBI and CIA, with the Bureau and NCSC collaborating on nongovernmental outreach. While there is no need to create a separate agency, a future President and DNI should amplify NCSC’s authorities and roles with respect to counterintelligence strategy, policy, outreach, and governance, including supporting necessary Joint Duty Assignments (JDA) for FBI and CIA personnel. At the same time, the FBI requires significant additional resources and legal authorities to fulfill its statu- tory role as the lead operational counterintelligence agency in dealing with the ever-growing threats posed by our adversaries. The CEA should be updated to include foreign espionage efforts aimed at universities. Corporate America, technology companies, research institutions, and academia must be willing, educated partners in this generational fight to protect our national security interests, economic interests, national sovereignty, and intellectual prop- erty as well as the broader rules-based order—all while avoiding the tendency to cave to the left-wing activists and investors who ignore the China threat and increasingly dominate the corporate world. Reinstitution of the National Security Higher Education Advisory Board and the National Security Business Alliance Council should be prioritized with leadership from the NCSC, the FBI, or a com- bination of both entities. When the CCP steals at least $400 billion–$600 billion in intellectual prop- erty each year, it is time to devote some strategic thinking to exactly how and to what degree counterintelligence efforts can help to protect America’s commercial endeavors. If Chinese strategic technology gains are happening almost entirely in transnational commercial space, for example, and the private sector is also gath- ering and analyzing some critical intelligence, these essential data points should assist in national-level counterintelligence efforts.
Introduction
— 348 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise materials, private school tuition, transportation and more—accounts modeled after the accounts in Arizona, Florida, West Virginia, and seven other states. l Members of Congress should design the same account system for students in active-duty military families, including students attending schools that receive funding under the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).18 Heritage Foundation research found that if even 10 percent of the students eli- gible for accounts under such a proposal transferred from an assigned school to an education savings account, the change for the sending district would be 0.1 percent of that school district’s K–12 budget. Even in heavily impacted districts (districts with a large number of students receiving Impact Aid), the budgetary effect would be less than 2 percent. Yet these children would then have the chance to receive a customized education that meets their unique needs. As with state ESA programs, families who are homeschooling are distinct in statute from families who use an ESA to customize an education at home. Furthermore, research from the Claremont Institute used documents pro- vided by a whistleblower demonstrating how educators at Department of Defense schools around the world are using radical gender theory and critical race theory in their lessons. This instructional material discards biology in favor of political indoctrination and applies critical race theory’s core tenets advocating for more racial discrimination. Such ideas are highly unpopular among parents, accord- ing to nationally representative surveys, and the course material attempts to indoctrinate students with radical ideas about race and the ambiguous concept of “gender.” Finally, schools on tribal lands and under the auspices of the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) are among the worst-performing public schools in the country. Research from Rep. Burgess Owens’ office reports that the graduation rate for BIE students is 53 percent, lower than the average for Native American students in public schools around the country, and nearly 30 percentage points lower than the national average for all students. In 2015, Arizona lawmakers expanded the state’s education savings account program to include children living on tribal lands, and by 2021, nearly 400 Native American children were using the accounts. l Federal officials should design a federal education savings account option for all children attending BIE schools. The next Administration should make the K–12 systems under federal juris- diction examples of quality learning opportunities and education freedom. — 349 — Department of Education Washington should convert some of the lowest-performing public school systems in the country into areas defined by choices, creating rigorous learning options for all children and from all backgrounds, income levels, and ethnicities. Expand Education Choice Through Portability of Existing Federal Funds Setting education policy on the right track long term would require sunsetting the U.S. Department of Education altogether. Doing so would not result in fewer resources and less assistance for children with special needs or from low-income families. Rather, closing the federal behemoth would better target existing taxpayer resources already set aside for these students by shifting oversight responsibilities to federal and state agencies that have more expertise in helping these populations. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is the federal law gov- erning taxpayer spending on K–12 students with special needs. The law stipulates that students have a right to a “free and appropriate education,” and 95 percent of children with special needs attend assigned public schools. The education is not always appropriate, however: Special education is fraught with legal battles. Some argue that the education of children with special needs is the most litigated area of K–12 education. Thus, despite a nearly 50-year-old federal law that sees regular revision and reauthorization and approximately $13.5 billion per year in federal taxpayer spending, parents still struggle to establish intervention plans for their students with public school district officials regarding the physical and educational requirements for their children with special needs. State-level education options often exclusively serve children with special needs for these very reasons. Florida, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Mississippi, South Carolina, and North Carolina, to name a few states, all have education savings accounts or K–12 private school scholarship options for children with special needs. l Federal lawmakers should move IDEA oversight and implementation to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. l Officials should then consider revising IDEA to require that a child’s portion of the federal taxpayer spending under the law be made available to families so parents can choose how and where a child learns. l IDEA already allows families to choose a private school under certain conditions, but federal officials should update the law so that families can use their child’s IDEA spending for textbooks, education therapies, personal tutors, and other learning expenses, similar to the way in which parents use education savings accounts in states such as Arizona and Florida. These micro-education savings accounts
Showing 3 of 5 policy matches
About These Correlations
Policy matches are calculated using semantic similarity between bill summaries and Project 2025 policy text. A score of 60% or higher indicates meaningful thematic overlap. This does not imply direct causation or intent, but highlights areas where legislation aligns with Project 2025 policy objectives.