Global Security Newswire

Plans to establish a new biological defense facility in Kansas might continue to face challenges from U.S. lawmakers for another half-decade, Governor Sam Brownback said last week (see GSN, Jan. 10).

U.S. Representative Timothy Bishop (D-N.Y. ), whose district encompasses the Plum Island Animal Disease Center near Long Island, N.Y., has pressed the Obama administration not to seek financing for the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility planned near Manhattan, Kan.,
the Associated Press reported.

Due to open in 2018, the Kansas site is intended to assume disease research functions now based at the Plum Island facility. The Homeland Security Department is expected to provide $40 million for a portion of the laboratory pending completion of a threat assessment.

“This is going to be a continuous fight for a while,” Brownback told a gathering of Democratic and Republican state lawmakers. “We’re going to be fighting for another five years on this thing.”

Personnel at the White House's Management and Budget Office are "looking to cut everything they can" given the current federal budget situation, the Republican governor said.

"We’re going to fight,” Brownback said. “We’re going to get it, and it’s going to get done” (Associated Press/Lawrence Journal-World, Feb. 8).