DHS science and technology directorate faces near annihilation.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew
• Position: Homeland Security News - United States Department of Homeland Security

The budget being proposed by the House for the Department of Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate is so bare bones it would essentially terminate most of the research and development in the department the head of the division said.

"It is basically a decision not to have an S&T directorate," Tara O'Toole, undersecretary of the division, said of the proposed House cuts.

There is a point where DHS would no longer have a credible science and technology directorate, O'Toole testified before the House Homeland Security Committee's cybersecurity, infrastructure protection and security technology subcommittee.

The $398 million the House budget proposes for fiscal year 2012 would be a record low investment in R&D. Of that amount more than half must be spent to maintain laboratories and on other mandatory spending. That leaves $106 million for discretionary R&D, amounting to an 80 percent cut over the last fiscal year, O'Toole said.

Half of the $106 million would be needed to pay for existing commitments and to shut down projects it could no longer afford,

"This would be a very dire set of circumstances for DHS," she said.

The directorate would be left with $45 million to support all R&D investments, which would only fund Transportation Security Administration projects, she said. Cybersecurity, chemical-biological, border security, cargo security and first responder research would "all go away."

"There would be no money for any of that," she added.

Charles Kieffer, staff director at the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on homeland security, said the directorate's budget is going to go down, although he predicted that it won't be as bad as the House version of the bill.

He declined to give specific numbers because negotiations between the House and Senate bills were still under way.

"It obviously is not going to be the level that is in the House bill, but I'm not in a position to say what it's going to be."

The Senate's proposed $657 million budget would leave it as a viable R&D organization, "but barely," O'Toole said. At that level, the directorate could only focus on four priority areas: transportation security, biological, cybersecurity and first responder needs, but nothing else, she...