A sweeping spending bill calls for federal government employees to be banned from using TikTok on government-owned devices, the latest in a series of steps by governments to try to curb the reach of the popular Chinese-owned short-video app.
The provision was included in the $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill to fund the U.S. government through most of 2023. Top Democrats and Republicans unveiled the bill early Tuesday, and Congress needs to pass the measure by Friday to avoid a partial government shutdown.
The inclusion of the TikTok provision underscored the growing bipartisan support for clamping down on the social media app and stood as a remarkably quick action by a hidebound Congress. Just last week, the Senate unanimously backed a bill to prohibit TikTok on government devices. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who introduced the legislation, called TikTok “a Trojan Horse for the Chinese Communist Party.”
“It’s a major security risk to the United States, and until it is forced to sever ties with China completely, it has no place on government devices,” he said in a statement last week. “States across the U.S. are banning TikTok on government devices. It’s time for Joe Biden and the Democrats to help do the same.”
Leaders on both sides of the aisle, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), backed the legislation.
TikTok is already banned from government devices at a number of federal agencies, including the White House and State departments. And a growing number of states, particularly Republican-leading ones, have banned the app out of fear that Chinese companies could be tracking Americans.
TikTok has repeatedly pushed back on the charges.
A TikTok spokesperson told The Washington Post last week that Hawley’s legislation “does nothing to advance U.S. national security interests.”
And Vanessa Pappas, chief operating officer of TikTok, a subsidiary of Chinese company ByteDance, told Congress in September that the company’s Chinese employees abided by strict access controls over U.S. data and did not provide information to China.
Congress plans to vote this week on the omnibus bill, which includes a number of President Biden’s economic priorities. The White House Office of Management and Budget has 60 days “to develop standards and guidelines for executive agencies requiring the removal” of TikTok from federal devices, according to the bill.
The Consolidated Appropriations Act 2023, which consists of all 12 fiscal year 2023 appropriations bills, listed “keeping our nation and our communities safe by … defending global democracy from Russian and Chinese threats” among the bill’s key provisions.
“This process was far from perfect, but ultimately it allowed Republican red lines to be adhered to and because of that I will urge my colleagues to support this package,” Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.), vice chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said Tuesday. “We need to do our job and fund the government.”
