By Emelie Rutherford
A $37 million reduction to the Coast Guard’s Deepwater modernization program and $19 million dip in cybersecurity funding are among the modest cuts to the Obama administration’s Department of Homeland Security budget request that House appropriators will weigh later this week.
The House Appropriations Homeland Security subcommittee (HAC-HS) marked up the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) fiscal year 2010 spending bill Monday night. It wants to cut the Obama administration’s $42.8 billion DHS request by $205 million, dropping the figure to $42.6 billion. The subcommittee’s marked-up bill will be taken up by the full House Appropriations Committee (HAC) on Friday.
Full HAC Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.) at Monday’s HAC-HS markup called the panel’s $42.6 billion proposal “a good bill.” Yet subcommittee Ranking Member Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) said the bill is not “absolutely perfect,” and said he “may have a few suggestions” during the full committee markup for refinements.
The HAC-HS’s mark calls for cutting the administration’s request for the Coast Guard’s Deepwater effort by $37 million–lowering the requested $1.05 billion to $1.01 billion. No details were provided by the panel, and none of the members at the brief markup discussed the once-troubled modernization effort that dominated congressional hearings two years ago.
The HAC-HS wants to increase Coast Guard funding overall, and is proposing boosting the administration’s $9.73 billion request for the service to $9.97 billion–a $239 million boost.
Subcommittee Chairman David Price (D-N.C.) noted during the markup that the Coast Guard’s funding has grown in part because its budget now includes monies, previously included in supplemental war-funding bills, for it to support war-and-military-related operations. Thus, the DHS bill includes $242 million for the Coast Guard to support overseas contingency operations, including those in the Persian Gulf and against pirates off the coast of Somalia.
“Moving these funds to a regular appropriations bill, providing them to the Coast Guard directly, I think, improves transparency and allows for (effective) oversight,” Price said.
The HAC-HS’s bill also includes $382 million for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s National Cyber Security Division–$19 million less than the $401 million the administration requested. Despite the cut, Price highlighted the cybersecurity funding at the markup.
“The expertise necessary to protect vulnerable computer infrastructure has not generally kept pace with the escalating sophistication and intensity of cyber attacks,” he said.
The subcommittee’s mark also:
- provides $800 million for buying and installing explosive-detection systems to be located in airports near baggage-handling systems;
- has $123 million for air-cargo-security activities, an amount intended to ensure the mandate for 100 percent screening for air cargo by August 2010 is met;
- includes $804 million for Customs and Border Protection and the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office to develop systems to screen cargo for weapons and nuclear materials;
- provides $162 million to strengthen efforts to scan U.S.-bound cargo;
- includes $692 million for infrastructure and technology, including fencing and vehicle barriers, at the United States’ southwest border; and
- calls for extending the E-Verify and chemical-security programs.
Price noted member-requested earmarks in the subcommittee’s bill are 5 percent lower than last year’s level.
The HAC-HS’s $42.6 billion is 1 percent below the administration’s request, and 6.5 percent above FY ’09 funding, when Coast Guard overseas operations costs are excluded.