$60 Million Less for Cybersecurity in House FY 2011 Bill
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The House Appropriations Committee plans to decrease cybersecurity funding by $60 million for the remaining seven months of the fiscal year, which makes the cut the largest discretionary funding reduction in congressional history, Nextgov reports.
Under the proposed H.R. 1 plan, the infrastructure protection and information security program would get $806 million rather than the $866 million Department of Homeland Security requested.
The committee would eliminate $6 million in funds allocated for providing next-generation networks with national security and emergency preparedness communications, in the event a possible cyber attack shuts down networks.
Meanwhile, House Homeland Security Committee ranking member Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., estimates that another Republican-backed measure, H.R. 408, aimed at slashing federal spending in fiscal 2012 to fiscal 2006 levels, would reduce the cyber and infrastructure protection program by $275 million.
Last week, Thompson released a report that said the reduction would mean “ground would be lost on efforts to identify, address and mitigate cybersecurity and physical vulnerabilities to federal and private sector networks,” Nextgov’s Aliya Sternstein wrote.
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