Hearing of the Emergency Preparedness, Response, and Communications Subcommittee of the House Homeland Security Committee - The Fiscal Year 2013 Budget Request for the Department Homeland Security's Office of Health Affairs

Statement

I'm pleased to welcome back Dr. Garza before the Subcommittee to discuss
the President's budget request for the Office of Health Affairs.

The Office of Health Affairs' mission is to provide health and medical
expertise in support of the Department's mission to prepare for, respond to,
and recover from all hazards impacting the nation's security. OHA is
charged with helping to protect the health of Americans in the case of a
national incident with health consequences.

This Subcommittee maintains great interest in ensuring that OHA's request
and ultimate use of appropriated funds are indeed providing enhanced
health security for the nation.

The President's FY 2013 budget request includes $166 million for OHA, a
slight decrease over the FY 2012 appropriation.

As per previous years, the BioWatch Program accounts for the vast majority
of this spending. BioWatch is, far and away, the most expensive activity of
the Office of Health Affairs, comprising $125 million, or 75 percent, of its
request this year.

$40 million of the BioWatch request is proposed for continued testing of the
next-generation technology known as Gen-3.

If successful, this new system would enable a drastic decrease in detection
time from the current 12 to 36 hours, down to 4 to 6 hours. It would also
provide detectors that function reliably indoors. As I relayed at our FY 2012
budget hearing, such milestones could represent important advances, but
only if we actually achieve those milestones. I and other Members have
become increasingly concerned about the viability of this developing
technology, and also about OHA's ability to deploy it on time and within
budget.

Any new BioWatch Program -- particularly one that will cost $5.7 billion --
must prove that it provides a substantial improvement over current
technologies, and that communities in which it will be deployed are fully on
board with using it.

In addition to BioWatch, I also look forward to discussing with Dr. Garza the
National Biosurveillance and Integration Center. NBIC seeks to fuse myriad
biosurveillance data to provide early detection of an event of national
significance, whether a devastating food-borne outbreak or an airborne
release of anthrax.

The $8 million request for NBIC is difficult to understand in light of the
absence of demonstrable success of the NBIC, and also in light of the
continued absence of the promised new strategic plan. Dr. Garza's
comments on this, as well as on how the new biosurveillance pilot programs
outlined in the request will help achieve integrated biosurveillance, will be
appreciated.

Although BioWatch and NBIC comprise about 80 percent of your request, I
also look forward to hearing how the FY 2013 budget plan supports other
activities, such as medical countermeasure distribution to DHS employees
and first responders, information sharing with State and local partners, and
facilitation of agricultural security. In light of continued risks to human and
animal health from terrorists and from Mother Nature, the level of attention
and funding these activities receive continues to be a priority for this
Subcommittee.

With that, I once again want to welcome Dr. Garza. We look forward to your testimony.

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