Lieberman pushes back against Chamber’s opposition to cybersecurity bill

Lieberman said he was disappointed by the Chamber’s letter and encouraged the business lobby to come to the table to help come up with a compromise, just as members of the Senate are doing this week. The co-sponsors of Lieberman’s bill and the Republican backers of Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) competing cybersecurity measure, the Secure It Act, have been meeting this week to try to hammer out an agreement to bridge their differences on cybersecurity.

“It doesn’t embrace the same spirit that I see members of the Senate embracing,” he said. “We can’t afford to be inflexible. We can’t be closed to compromise, because of the urgency of the threat to our country.

“You’ll never get anything done unless there’s some sort of compromise here,” he continued. “If you go into every negotiation saying, ‘I’ll only accept 100 percent of what I want,’ you’re not going to get anything.”

Bruce Josten, the vice president of government affairs at the Chamber, wrote in the letter that “more time is needed for the Senate to more fully assess this deeply flawed proposal.”

IBM also came out against Lieberman’s bill, arguing that it would saddle industry with additional regulations. TechAmerica, a technology trade group, raised similar concerns on Thursday, but stopped short of opposing the bill.