By Matthew M. Johnson, CQ Staff

A proposal to trim a Senate stimulus package to $780 billion would cut nearly $1.7 billion in programs involving national security for the Health and Human Services, State and Homeland Security departments.

Susan Collins , R-Maine, and Ben Nelson , D-Neb., spearheaded the effort to cut roughly $108 billion from the Senate version of the legislation (HR 1).

The proposal unveiled Feb. 6 would hit security-related public-health programs the hardest, stripping about $870 million from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, the agency within HHS charged with developing medical countermeasures for pandemic flu and likely bioterrorism agents.

The State Department would be the second-hardest hit, losing $429 million in stimulus money. Among the casualties would be provisions to provide $338 million for capital investments at State and the U.S. Agency for International Development, $90.5 million for diplomatic and consular programs, and $500,000 for the Office of the Inspector General. Under the revised plan, State and USAID capital investments would receive $286 million, diplomatic and consular programs $90 million, and the inspector general $1.5 million.

In all, the State Department would receive about $1 billion under the revised proposal.

The Homeland Security Department would lose $386.5 million in stimulus funding under the cuts. Among them: $200 million for baggage-screening equipment for the Transportation Security Administration, $122.5 million for new Coast Guard icebreakers and cutters, $50 million for a new DHS headquarters, and $14 million for cybersecurity research.

After the cuts, TSA would receive $1 billion, the Coast Guard $450 million, and the DHS headquarters project $198 million. Overall, DHS would receive about $5.1 billion under the proposal.

Two agencies that would not lose stimulus money under the revised plan are the Defense and Veterans Affairs departments. Defense would receive a total of $7.2 billion for operations and military construction projects and the VA about $4 billion.

A Congressional Budget Office report Feb. 2 estimated that two-thirds of DHS funding in the Senate version of the stimulus bill would be spent in the next three years.

About 80 percent of the $3.7 billion in the unamended stimulus package for construction and maintenance of VA hospitals would be spent in the next three years.

The $3 billion for Defense for construction of such things as barracks, hospitals, and daycare centers would “take some time” to spend, due to a six-month lag created in part by the need to prioritize the projects, the CBO estimated.

More than half of the $1 billion requested for the State Department would be spent by 2010, the CBO said.