CFATS Spending Cuts May Not Be Dead

The congressional news site TheHill.com is reporting that work is being done on preparing an Omnibus FY 2013 spending bill that would replace the stopgap spending bill, HJ Res 117/PL 112-175, that was signed by the President back in October. They are reporting that this bill could be considered in the Lame Duck session.

CFATS

There is currently no word about details that may be included in the bill, but there is a chance that the House Appropriations Committee cuts to the CFATS program found in HR 5855 could creep back into this bill. The earlier Senate DHS spending bill (S 3216) included some cuts to the CFATS program but was holding back on further cuts until a detailed DHS manpower and systems review of the CFATS program was completed. I have not seen the results of any such study but it would probably have been one of those politically restricted reports sent only to the appropriations committees.

On the other hand, an omnibus spending bill that included the standard CFATS extension until the end of the fiscal year would remove some of the pressure for early action on a comprehensive chemical facility security bill. Bills passed under time pressures are usually politically expedient rather than carefully considered and result in program delays and problems down the road. I think that we would prefer to see a carefully crafted bill passed in late 2013 or early 2014 than a politically expedient bill passed in February or March.

Cybersecurity

This type of spending bill might also be a way for Congress to slip some cybersecurity language in for covering some critical infrastructure systems. If it weren’t too onerous in its coverage of privately owned cyber-systems (including control systems) and avoided some of the privacy issues on IT security, it would be difficult to remove such provisions from this large of a bill.

It will have to be watched closely.

House DHS Spending Bill – Committee Print

The House Appropriations Committee published a press release today announcing the availability of their Committee Print of the FY 2013 DHS Appropriations bill that is being introduced today. The Committee Print will allow us to take a look at the provisions of the bill before the official GPO version gets printed.

I haven’t had a chance to take a detailed look at the bill, but I do note that §532 would provide a one-year extension of the current CFATS authorization until October 4^th, 2013. One odd thing though; that section is set off with heavy brackets. The only time that I have seen them in legislative documents was when they were setting off sections or phrases that were being deleted by an amendment. I don’t think that was the case here, but we will just have to wait for the publication of the official version to be sure.

The press release does mention the CFATS program. It explains:

“The bill provides $45.4 million for CFATS, $29.1 million below the amount requested and $47.9 million below last year’s level. This reduction is due to significant managerial problems, program delays, and poor budget execution.”

If this stands it will be a mighty blow against the program. A 50% reduction in spending when the program is so far behind will almost certainly cripple whatever hope the managers might have had of fixing the problems. A cut of that magnitude will absolutely require a reduction in manpower.

These figures will not show up in the language of the bill. Rather we can expect to see something (perhaps this same language) in the Committee Report that will also be filed today. It will probably be a day or two before we see this on the GPO site.

NOTE: Could this cut be a slap at the oversight committees that have done nothing about the ISCD problems that came to light last December beyond holding some lame hearings?