Senate

Key GOPer slams Dems on cyber: ‘Timing could not have been worse’

by Jordain Carney - 06/16/15 6:02 PM ET

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) slammed Democrats for blocking a cyber bill in light of a hack that exposed millions of workers’ information.

“While our nation’s public servants are having their personal, sensitive personal information stolen, the Democratic leader led nearly all of his colleagues to block sensible bipartisan legislation that was focused on that specific threat,” Cornyn, the Republican whip, said Tuesday.

{mosads}The breach, first announced earlier this month, potentially compromised the personal information of up to 14 million people working for the government, military, intelligence community and government contractors.

Cornyn suggested the Democrats’ opposition last week to including the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) to an annual defense policy bill was a part of what Senate Republicans are calling “filibuster summer.”

The term refers to Democrats’ pledge to block spending bills as part of an effort to get Republicans to make a deal to roll back sequester-level budget caps on both defense and non-defense spending.

“Since this was filibuster summer the minority leader, Senator Reid, decided that Democrats were going to vote as a group to block this amendment,” Cornyn said, adding that “not even 24 hours later though, their timing could not have been worse, the need for this critical legislation became even more urgent.”

Cornyn added that he hoped in light of the hack, and stories of other cyberattacks, that “our colleagues would work with us to do what the American people elected us to do, which is to work together to move forward sensible bipartisan legislation that’s important to this country.”

Democrats objected to the cyber bill being included in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) because they said the bill should be brought separately to the Senate floor, to allow time for debate and amendments.

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