What Happened To The Cybersecurity Bill?

The cybersecurity bill is dead for this Congress, with cloture failing by a vote of 52-46. The Senate's failure to reach any kind of compromise is particularly striking, given that roughly two-thirds of the basic ideas in the bill had been endorsed by all of the following: the Obama administration, Senator McCain and the great majority of Senate Republicans, Majority Leader Reid, Senators Lieberman and Collins, as well as a bipartisan majority of the House.

So, what went wrong? Who does everyone blame if we suffer a significant attack on our civilian infrastructure before Congress returns to the issue?

On the lobbying side, there are probably two candidates.

The US Chamber of Commerce is the Democrats' favorite whipping boy. But in this case the Democrats are right. The Chamber wanted this bill dead, and it rejected substantial efforts to accommodate its concerns on the part of Senators Lieberman, Collins, and Kyl — none of whom are exactly enemies of business. It simply pocketed the concessions and kept campaigning against the bill, threatening to make the issue a "key vote" and give supporters an antibusiness score on the Chamber's scorecard.

A less obvious but equally important role was played by the privacy groups, whose contribution I've described before. The information sharing provisions in CISPA, the House bill, had support from all parts of Congress and from the Administration, but the privacy groups managed to make the provisions controversial nonetheless, trashing not just the Republican-supported CISPA but even the Obama Administration's version of information sharing. That foreclosed any hope of reaching a compromise that would enact information sharing plus several uncontroversial provisions while stripping out the private sector standards (the Administration also rejected this half-a-loaf strategy).

Between them, business, and privacy lobbyists provided the friction that made progress on the bill difficult. Senators on both sides of the aisle were hearing from natural allies who opposed the bill.

But Senators are capable of pushing back on constituents, especially when national security is at issue. Why didn't that happen here?

To some extent...