Celia Israel: “This is a final amendment. It will not kill the bill. It will not send the bill back to committee. If adopted, the bill…”

“This is a final amendment. It will not kill the bill. It will not send the bill back to committee. If adopted, the bill will immediately proceed to final passage, as amended. Mr. Speaker, 2 weeks ago, D.C. went dark. The lights went out, the power stopped near the White House, lights out, no power at the Department of State. Federal agencies were plunged into darkness, small businesses plunged into darkness. Business stopped. The business of government stopped because there was a blackout. Now, in this case, Mr. Speaker, this loss of energy was because of a blown transformer, and there was no indication that this was a result of a cyber attack on our energy sources or systems. There are indications, Mr. Speaker, every day, of attempted attacks on our critical energy infrastructure, and this amendment simply strengthens the response of the Department of Homeland Security to protect our constituents, our government, our infrastructure, and our country from this attack. Mr. Speaker, in the first 6 months of 2012, we know that there was a sustained and persistent cyber attack on critical gas pipeline control systems. Now, the good news is that we successfully defended against those attacks. The bad news is, as we all know, the very nature of cyber war means that every time you defend against an attack, you are transmitting to your attackers what your defenses are.…”