Senate Cybersecurity Floor Debate to Begin in April, Lieberman Says
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., will bring the Cybersecurity Act, S-2105, to the floor after the Easter/Passover recess, Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., told us Tuesday. “It won’t happen now in this work session, I don’t believe. But when we come back after the break Senator Reid will take the bill to the floor and challenge us to deal with it,” he said.
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If Reid schedules a Senate vote for mid-April after lawmakers return from their recess, it would coincide with the House Republican plan to hold a “cyberweek” to vote on its four pending cybersecurity bills. Lieberman said he'd be “glad” to have an open amendment process where Senate Republicans would incorporate “their bill into our bipartisan bill, submit it and let’s debate it and let’s see who’s got the votes.” Lieberman’s only GOP cosponsor is Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, Homeland Security ranking member.
Lieberman and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., still “obviously have a disagreement” following a recent meeting to negotiate the differences between S-2105 and McCain’s alternative SECURE IT Act (S-2151), Lieberman said. McCain’s bill lacks any requirements to compel owners and operators of critical infrastructure to increase their cybersecurity protections. S-2105 authorizes the Homeland Security secretary to identify where private sector performance requirements are inadequate and develop new performance requirements for owners and operators of covered critical infrastructure (CD Feb 15 p9).
When asked whether McCain has shown an openness to incorporating critical infrastructure regulations into the final bill, Lieberman said: “We are talking. … We both asked our staff to see if we could find a common ground on that critical question over whether the federal government has the right to set standards for owners of critical cyberinfrastructure to meet for national defense. This is probably the number one national security vulnerability we have now, which is inadequate defense of American cyberspace from enemy attack and theft.”