Security

'Budgets are moral documents,' Rep. Delia Ramirez said

Democratic lawmakers on Thursday blasted President Trump’s spending priorities – specifically a proposed $1 billion White House security and ballroom project and a nearly $1.8 billion “slush fund” for Trump allies tied to the January 6 Capitol riot – as his administration pushes deep cuts to cybersecurity funding.

US Representative Delia Ramirez (D-IL) decried the president's priorities as Congress weighs reauthorization of the State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program (SLCGP), a funding effort that began in 2022 and earmarked $1 billion to state and local governments over the next four years to help mitigate cyber risks. 

"Budgets are moral documents, and spending a billion dollars on a ballroom, which is what the president wants, or $1.7 billion to incentivize insurrectionists while we still are waiting for the reauthorization of this critical grant program, says a lot about where priorities are right now with this administration," she said during a House Homeland Security subcommittee hearing on state and local cybersecurity.

Another Democrat on the committee, Rep. James Walkinshaw (D-VA), noted the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) also eliminated federal support for the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC), which used to provide free and low-cost threat detection and response services to state and local governments. 

The MS-ISAC has since shifted to a fee-based model to support the state threat sharing program. 

This means, as expert witness Samir Jain, VP of policy for the Center for Democracy and Technology, testified, “jurisdictions that most need the help are least likely to be able to afford it. Smaller jurisdictions, because if they don't have the resources and the money to join the ISAC, they probably also don't have the resources and the money to buy equipment, to buy network monitoring tools, to have cybersecurity staff. It's the ones who need it the most are the least likely to be able to get it as a result.” 

Walkinshaw also pointed out that CISA’s 2025 budget was about $3 billion. President Trump proposed slashing the cyber-defense agency’s spending by $707 million in 2027, to just over $2 billion. 

This is on top of the $135 million in cuts to CISA, along with about a third of its workforce (close to 1,000 people) since Trump returned to office. 

“So we are looking at a one-third cut in federal funding for cybersecurity,” Walkinshaw said. “If President Trump gets his way, we'd be spending a billion dollars for the ballroom and $1.8 billion for the January 6 slush fund – $2.8 billion just on those two items, $800 million more than his total commitment to cybersecurity.”

Meanwhile, other expert witnesses who testified before the committee, all IT and security chiefs from Tennessee, New York, and Florida, implored the lawmakers to spend more – not less – on state and local infosec.

“State and local governments operate critical systems that citizens rely on every day, including emergency services, schools, utilities, courts, and public infrastructure,” Tennessee CIO Kristin Darby told lawmakers. 

“Those systems are increasingly targeted by criminal organizations and nation-state actors,” she said, adding that “demand for cybersecurity support far exceeds the current funding levels.”

As AI-enabled attacks, ransomware infections, and cloud-based system intrusions accelerate across Tennessee, “many local governments across our state have little or no dedicated cybersecurity staff,” Darby continued. “This creates a dangerous imbalance between highly sophisticated attackers and severely resource-constrained defenders.”

New York state director of security and intelligence Colin Ahern urged lawmakers to “reauthorize and fully fund the state and local cybersecurity grant program, which is the single most consequential investment in the cyber protection of state and local governments in this country.”

He also advocated for frontier-model AI access for state and local governments, which are tasked with protecting the power grid, drinking water supply, public health systems, and other critical operations. 

“We cannot do that while frontier defensive AI capabilities are restricted to federal partners and a handful of large enterprises,” Ahern said. 

“Cybersecurity is the silent partner of democracy,” he continued. “When the utilities, school districts, and state and local governments that constitute the operational fabric of American life are hollowed out by cyber attacks, the institutions that support our democratic life are hollowed out with them.” ®