Sponsors (6)
Allows the BIS Under Secretary to appoint up to 25 outside experts for up to five years with senior-level pay and reporting requirements to address expertise gaps.
Official title: To authorize the Under Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Security to appoint certain personnel in order to attract highly qualified experts, and for other purposes.
Introduced January 9, 2026 by Jefferson Shreve · Last progress January 9, 2026
The bill lets BIS quickly bring in a small number of highly paid external experts to strengthen export-control and emerging-technology enforcement, trading off faster, more flexible staffing against risks to civil‑service norms, higher taxpayer costs, staff morale, and potential loss of institutional knowledge.
BIS and U.S. export-control efforts: can rapidly hire up to 25 external senior experts with competitive pay, improving the Bureau’s ability to enforce export controls and manage emerging-technology threats.
Federal employees: the authority is time-limited (generally 5 years with a possible 1-year extension per hire), which reduces the risk of long-term disruption to civil-service hiring norms.
Taxpayers and oversight bodies: an annual reporting requirement increases transparency about hiring needs, appointments made, and the impact of these hires on BIS's mission.
Federal employees: the authority allows bypassing competitive civil‑service hiring rules, potentially undermining merit-based hiring and career civil‑service protections.
Taxpayers and career BIS staff: permitting high external salaries (capped near the Vice President’s pay) can raise taxpayer costs and create pay disparities that harm morale among career civil servants.
BIS and its long-term operations: temporary appointments risk loss of institutional knowledge and continuity when time-limited hires depart after their terms end.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Authorizes the Under Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Security to recruit and appoint up to 25 outside "highly qualified experts" to the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) for up to five years to fill technical and policy expertise gaps. Appointees may be paid up to the Senior Executive Service maximum plus locality pay, subject to an annual compensation cap, are exempted from several civil-service hiring statutes, and the authority expires five years after enactment; the Under Secretary must publish an annual gap analysis and report to Congress on hiring and impacts.