John Tierney: “Tonight I rise to offer the final amendment. I want to be clear that this is a final amendment to the bill. It will not…”

“Tonight I rise to offer the final amendment. I want to be clear that this is a final amendment to the bill. It will not kill the bill, nor will it send it back to committee. If it's adopted, the bill will be voted on immediately as amended. Let me start by saying that it's unfortunate that the House Republicans unilaterally reneged upon the agreed upon discretionary caps that were established by the Budget Control Act. Their doing so-- just to finance more tax cuts for people that were already tremendously well-off--has resulted in the Appropriations Committee having to absorb $19 billion in reductions below the Budget Control Act. So I recognize, Mr. Speaker, that subcommittee Chairman Aderholt and Ranking Member Price did the very best that they could with this bill given the subcommittee's allocation. Nevertheless, I offer this final amendment that focuses on two important areas: combating the increasing cyberthreat facing this country and protecting our urban areas from terrorist threats. This week's Washington Post pointed out that in recent years, there have been numerous revelations about how the unknown vulnerabilities of our networks and cyberinformation were used to break into systems that were assumed to be secure. {time} 2140 One came in 2009 targeting Google, Northrop Grumman, Dow Chemical and hundreds of other firms when hackers from China penetrated the targeted computer systems.…”