Senate Banking Committee hearing urges bipartisan reauthorization and targeted modernization of the Defense Production Act

At a hearing of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, Chairman Tim Scott and Ranking Member Elizabeth Warren said Congress must reauthorize the Defense Production Act before it lapses in September and consider targeted reforms to keep the law focused on national defense and emergency response.

The DPA, enacted in 1950, gives the president authorities to prioritize contracts, fund industrial capacity and coordinate with industry during crises. Witnesses at the hearing said the statute remains essential but needs updates to reflect modern supply-chain threats, cyber risk and the strategic competition with China.

Witnesses outlined specific changes they said Congress should consider. Dr. John McGinn, executive director of the Brownie Center for Government Contracting at George Mason University, recommended keeping the DPA focused on defense and national emergencies while modernizing Title I allocation procedures, making Title III more agile and usable, and refreshing Title VII governance. McGinn also urged removing the current non‑delegable requirement that the president personally sign each Title III determination and raising the DPA Title III fund ceiling, now set at $750 million, to enable multiyear purchase commitments and offtake guarantees.

"Title III is a tremendous tool for building industrial capacity through grants, loans, purchases and purchase commitments," McGinn said in his testimony. He recommended simplifying overlapping executive orders that govern national allocations and modernizing the administration of Title I to speed responses.

Experts also recommended governance and coordination reforms. Jared Brown, executive director of Global Shield, told senators that plans for using DPA authorities often assume private‑sector capacity that does not exist and urged stronger pre‑crisis collaboration between agencies and industry. Brown and others recommended strengthening the Defense Production Act Committee (DPAC) and improving transparency for how agencies plan to deploy DPA authorities during catastrophes.

Dr. Rush Doshi, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, framed the urgency in strategic competition with China and pressed Congress to preserve flexibility while adding clearer definitions and scenarios for invoking the statute. "Instead of narrowing the DPA to military production only, Congress should consider updating the definition of national defense... by providing relevant domains, scenarios, threats or tier justifications for invoking DPA," Doshi said.

Senators and witnesses discussed additional reforms that have appeared in previous bills and proposals: increased use of voluntary sector agreements under Title VII, reactivating a National Defense Executive Reserve of industry executives for emergency service, permitting Title III investments in allied nations that support the U.S. defense industrial base, and establishing multiyear Title III funds for priorities such as missile production and rare earth processing.

Committee members pressed on oversight, foreign‑ownership protections and the need to depoliticize DPA use. McGinn and other witnesses said existing vetting and contracting safeguards apply to Title III awards but urged stronger interagency coordination to ensure taxpayer dollars do not benefit foreign adversaries. The panel also discussed past caps and restrictions that followed politically contentious uses of the law, and witnesses argued those lessons support clearer statutory boundaries and improved governance rather than abandonment of the authority.

The hearing record includes multiple examples of DPA use cited by witnesses — from wartime mobilizations to pandemic emergency production — and officials said modern threats such as cyberattacks, geoeconomic coercion and adversary manipulation of industrial markets increase the statute's importance. Senators asked witnesses to identify specific statutory and administrative changes that would both preserve DPA's core mission and make it faster and more predictable for industry partners.

Senators announced a schedule for follow-up: written questions for the record are due one week after the hearing and witnesses will have 45 days to reply. The committee will use witness testimony and the record as it works toward a reauthorization bill.

For now, committee leaders and witnesses framed reauthorization as a bipartisan priority, emphasizing legislation that would preserve DPA's emergency and defense focus while updating funding authorities, governance and agency coordination to reflect twenty‑first century supply‑chain and cyber risks.