The Senate on Wednesday shelved until September debate of a cybersecurity bill aimed at increasing threat information shared between private entities and government.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) revoked cloture on the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015 (S.754) and announced that there would be no further roll call votes this week, kicking off August recess. Upon return, senators will debate the Iran nuclear deal before proceeding to the cyber bill. 
McConnell and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid agreed that the GOP would be allowed to offer 10 amendments to CISA, while Democrats will offer 11.
The decision to postpone consideration of the bill came after Senate leaders delayed a vote twice that day. A vote on the motion to proceed with the bill initially was scheduled Wednesday morning, but Senate leadership pushed it back. McConnell said then that he and Reid had made “some progress” during negotiations, but needed more time to hammer out a deal.
After a second delay was announced that afternoon, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) told the press he was becoming “increasingly convinced” that all action on CISA would be postponed until September. Wyden is one of the bill’s biggest opponents and the lone member of the Senate Intelligence Committee who voted against it.
“It is my hope that here in the next few hours, there will be a decision that the Senate is not going to try to do a rush job on a topic like this. We understand how horrendous this Office of Personnel and Management hack was,” he said, referring to breaches at the agency that compromised more than 21 million people’s personal information. “But we also know that Americans are saying the government isn’t doing that great securing the data it stores now.
“In the fall there will be a chance for a real discussion of the issues,” he added.
Earlier in the morning, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), one of the cosponsors of the bill, lamented the Senate’s slow progress on CISA.
“I think it’s fair to say that I’ve been very disappointed over the last couple of days that we have not moved to this bill more quickly and that we haven’t reached an agreement to take up and begin considering amendments,” she said on the floor.
A piece of legislation aimed at improving the cyber defenses of civilian federal agencies, the Federal Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2015 (FCEA, S. 1869), will be debated as an amendment to CISA. The bipartisan bill, which was passed by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee last month, was filed by cosponsors Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), Tom Carper (D-Del.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Mark Warner (D-Va.), Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.)
The Senate will reconvene on September 8.