Congress has
drastically trimmed the budget for U.S. spies and satellites for 2013, though
not quite as deeply as the White House wanted.
In one of the
last votes of the year, House lawmakers voted Monday 373-29 in favor of a
Senate-passed bill to slightly boost the president's $72 billion budget request
for intelligence agencies including the CIA, adding extra cash for the
counterterrorism fight against al-Qaeda, and the counterintelligence fight
against foreign governments trying to spy on the U.S.
That's down
sharply from roughly $80 billion in 2012, which marked the peak of intelligence
spending since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
"The bill holds
personnel levels, one of the biggest cost drivers, generally at last year's
levels," said House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich. "Even
so, the bill adds a limited number of new personnel positions for select,
high-priority positions, such as FBI surveillance officers to keep watch on
terrorists."
The House
Intelligence Committee's ranking member, Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md., said
the bill "invests in personnel and programs that are working and cuts things
that aren't."
The bill was
stripped of several measures meant to block the leaking of classified
information, including a provision that would have limited which government
officials could brief journalists on intelligence. The measures had been drafted
after lawmakers objected to a series of news stories that anonymously quoted
senior administration sources describing sensitive intelligence programs, such
as the process by which targets are chosen for lethal drone strikes
overseas.
The chairwoman
of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., says the
measures were taken out to get the bill passed but that the issue remains a
problem.
"Unfortunately,
I am certain that damaging leaks of classified information will continue, and so
the committee will need to continue to look for acceptable ways to address this
problem," Feinstein said Friday after the Senate version of the bill
passed.
The legislation,
if signed into law by President Barack Obama, will require the White House to
inform Congress when it decides to share classified information with reporters,
giving lawmakers a heads-up before they read about it in the media.
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