Sponsors
The bill preserves CISA's workforce and cyber-response capability during FY2026 funding gaps and reduces overlapping payments, but it shifts near-term costs to taxpayers and creates funding uncertainty and administrative burdens for nonfederal recipients and federal managers.
CISA employees and federal cybersecurity operations will continue receiving pay and benefits and maintain incident-response capacity during FY2026 funding gaps, preventing interruptions to cybersecurity staffing and federal cyber readiness.
Taxpayers and federal financial managers are protected from duplicate or overlapping payments because the bill prohibits using these funds for periods already paid from other sources and automatically terminates the authority when a later appropriation is enacted.
State and local governments, and eligible nonprofits gain clearer information about how long funds and authorities are available, which helps their short-term planning and budgeting for programs covered by the bill.
State and local governments, nonprofits, and contractors could face sudden funding loss or mid-project interruptions if a later appropriation omits or ends the program, forcing rushed spending, contract changes, or program disruptions.
Taxpayers will bear increased near-term federal outlays to continue CISA pay and benefits during funding gaps, raising short-term costs.
Using temporary appropriations and charging expenditures to future bills can complicate accounting and increase administrative burden for CISA, OMB, and federal financial managers.
Based on analysis of 8 sections of legislative text.
Allows CISA to use temporary FY2026 funds to pay staff during any lapse in appropriations, charging costs to later appropriations and expiring by Sept 30, 2026 if no regular appropriation is enacted.
Introduced March 12, 2026 by Gary C. Peters · Last progress March 12, 2026
Provides temporary funding authority so the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) can continue to pay its employees during fiscal year 2026 if regular appropriations lapse. The measure allows the CISA Director to obligate whatever sums are necessary to cover standard pay, allowances, pay differentials, benefits, and other regular payments for CISA staff beginning in mid-February 2026 and treats those payments like prior continuing-appropriations guidance. Payments cannot duplicate any pay already provided from other funds, must be charged to the appropriate appropriation when regular funding is enacted, and the authority expires at the earlier of a regular appropriation, a law that withholds funding for these purposes, or September 30, 2026. The law is retroactive to February 13, 2026.