House committee sets CISA budget cut at $135M, not Trump’s $495M
A House panel approved a fiscal 2026 funding bill Monday that would cut the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency by $135 million from fiscal 2025, significantly less than the Trump administration’s proposed $495 million.
The chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, Rep. Mark Amodei, said the annual Department of Homeland Security funding measure “responsibly trimmed” the CISA budget. But Illinois Rep. Lauren Underwood, the top Democrat on his panel, said the legislation “fails to address the catastrophic cybersecurity threats facing our critical infrastructure.”
The subcommittee approved the bill by a vote of 8-4.
CISA would get $2.7 billion under the measure, according to a committee fact sheet, or $134.8 million less than the prior year.
While the full committee chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., said “the bill provides critical support for cybersecurity technology,” Republicans also criticized the agency’s past work.
“In terms of cyber security, DHS has an important role to play defending critical infrastructure and Federal networks against cyber attack, but CISA strayed from the authority given to it by the Congress,” Amoedi said in a prepared opening statement. “We have responsibly trimmed that agency’s budget by eliminated duplicative contracts and positions, consolidated election security and chemical security missions into the existing critical infrastructure security framework, defunded equity positions and returned the focus of CISA to its core mission of protecting Federal networks, and ensuring that the days of censorship through mis-, dis- and mal- information efforts are over.”
CISA under the Biden administration denied any censorship efforts.
Democrats on the subcommittee took issue with the proposed CISA cuts.
“Despite the ever-increasing threats against American families, businesses, critical infrastructure, and national institutions, their bill weakens our national security, and leaves Americans vulnerable to attacks from our adversaries by sharply cutting cyber and infrastructure security,” said Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the full committee.
Said Underwood: “The only people who benefit from this bill’s failure to invest here are cybercriminals in China, Russia, and around the world who will now find it easier to attack Americans.”
Still, the scaled-back cuts indicate at least a degree of bipartisan resistance to the scope of the Trump administration’s CISA-chopping agenda. The Trump blueprint called for more than 1,000 positions to be eliminated in fiscal 2026, although the administration has already reportedly reached that figure.
Amoedei said he expected “spirited amendment discussions” during full committee deliberations on the legislation Thursday.
