Homeland Security Department officials warned Nov. 3 of serious consequences to research and procurement operations from House-approved cuts to the budget.

"The challenge we face is in fiscal 2011, our budget was cut 19 percent during the [continuing resolution. In fiscal 2012, the House-approved cut our budget by 77 percent," said Paul Benda, director of the Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency, during testimony before the House Homeland Security subcommittee on transportation security.

Should the budget cuts relative to the request submitted to Congress in February come to pass, HSARPA would have to stop funding cybersecurity and biodefense research and significantly cut down on Small Business Innovation Research awards, Benda said.

"We'll go from 60 SBIR awards down to four," he told the subcommittee.

During the hearing, Nick Nayak, the DHS chief procurement officer, also said the DHS acquisition function would be affected by House-approved cuts, leading to a decrease in procurement oversight. The DHS contracting workforce, he said, has gone from 603 individuals during fiscal 2004 to now more than 1,400.

Programs at any DHS component worth more than $300 million are overseen by headquarters and about 82 such projects currently exist, Nayak said, adding that more than 500 DHS projects depend on contract vehicles and support from the office of chief procurement officer.

"if we had to sustain these cuts, here's what would pretty much go out the window: Replenishing our acquisition workforce, gone. Program oversight over those 500 programs, gone. Oversight in terms of all our procurement actions, 90,000 actions in nine contracting offices across the department--minimal at best," he said.

If the cut goes through "we most likely will be back here chatting about all kinds of stuff in terms of acquisition that we really don't want to," Nayak added.

For more:
- go to the hearing webpage (prepared statements and webcast available)

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