DHS Budget Schedule – Update 06-12-09

Chairman David Obey (D, WI) of the Appropriations Committee earlier this week published a tentative schedule for getting all of the FY2019 Appropriations bills through a House Floor vote prior to the August Recess. The Homeland Security Appropriations bill (still no bill number available) has been through the Subcommittee markup (6-8-09) and the Full Committee markup (earlier today) hearings. From the schedule it looks like the full committee will vote on the final version of the bill on Monday (6-15-09) at 6:30 pm EDT. His calendar calls for this bill to go to the floor for discussion (6-19-09) and a vote (6-23-09) this month. I don’t know how this will fit in with the schedule for the Homeland Security Committee, but they have been holding subcommittee hearings this week. To get to the floor by next Friday, there will have to be at least one full committee hearing between now and then. I haven’t been able to load the webcast of today’s Appropriations Committee mark-up hearing and they have no documentation posted yet to their site. That means that I have no idea what changes, if any have been made to that bill. If the Appropriations Committee is going to vote on it Monday, I expect that the GPO will not have a print version/electronic available before mid-day Tuesday at the earliest.

Appropriations Subcommittee Markup of DHS FY2010 Budget

Yesterday evening the Homeland Security Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee held their markup hearing of the FY2010 Department of Homeland Security Budget. Over all the reduced the budget by about 1% from the President’s request which left it about 6.5 percent above last years budget. There was apparently not much (if any) discussion about CFATS, but the Infrastructure Protection portion of the budget did show an increase of $13.180 million over the President’s budget request and more than $32 million over the current year’s budget for a total budget of $346 million. The Surface Transportation Security budget also showed an increase ($54 million) over this year’s budget, but a decline ($13 million) from the President’s budget request. The FY2010 markup calls for a FY2010 budget of $103 million.