Does Illinois have a balanced budget?

Illinois lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are claiming they passed a balanced budget for the upcoming fiscal year 2019. An Illinois Policy Institute analysis found that the budget was unbalanced by as much as $1.5 billion based on realistic revenue assumptions. What explains the difference? Smoke and mirrors. To make the budget appear balanced on paper, lawmakers are relying on a number of common budgetary gimmicks that don’t actually lead to balance. These gimmicks account for the fact that despite a constitutional balanced budget requirement, Illinois has not had a truly balanced budget since at least 2001. Speculative pension savings The spending plan relies on more than $444 million in pension savings. As much as $422 million of that amount is speculative and unlikely to materialize. Most of the supposed savings come from two completely voluntary “pension buyouts.” First, vested but inactive Tier 1 pensioners – meaning employees hired before 2011 – are given the option of receiving 60 percent of the net present value of their pension annuity in a lump sum payment. Lawmakers claim this will save $41 million. Second, the largest portion of the expected savings – $381.9 million – comes from an optional cost of living adjustment, or COLA, buyout. This would give Tier 1 members the option to trade their 3 percent compounding increases for a 1.5 percent simple annual increase, in exchange for an immediate payment of 70 percent of the net value of their future increases under the higher formula. Lawmakers plan to issue up to $1 billion in bonds to pay for those buyouts now, since they don’t have the money on hand. The state previously borrowed $17.2 billion to make pension payments, which will cost $25.8 billion to pay off in the long run. The problem? Lawmakers are essentially counting on state workers to voluntarily cut their own pensions. According to state Rep. Mark Batinick, R-Plainfield, the savings are calculated using a 22 percent uptake rate on the pension buyouts, which is the same uptake rate as a similar plan passed in Missouri. Unfortunately, the situation in Missouri is very different from the situation in Illinois. Illinois’ Supreme Court has declared that the pension protection clause protects not only earned benefits, but future increases in those benefits as well. Missouri does not operate under this restriction. Some pensioners may see the writing on the wall and decide that they want to take their retirement security out of the hands of politicians, in case the pension system goes insolvent. However, many state workers may also be unwilling to give up a constitutionally guaranteed benefit increase for a much smaller guaranteed payment now. That makes the Missouri uptake rate unrealistic for Illinois. If significantly fewer Illinois workers accept the buyout options than expected, lawmakers will have a hole in the budget that could amount to hundreds of millions of dollars. Ignoring known costs Illinois state workers represented by the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, or AFSCME, currently do not have a contract with the state. The last contract expired on June 30, 2015. Gov. Bruce Rauner and AFSCME have not been able to agree on a number of costly requests the union is making. Despite being without a contract, courts have ordered the Rauner administration to pay the raises union workers would have received under the last contract. According to Wirepoints, this could cost as much as $400 million. The state did not account for these costs in its recent spending plan. That means the state has as much as a $400 million liability, that it should be fully aware it needs to pay, not accounted for in the budget. Illinois families cannot balance their budgets on paper by simply ignoring their rent. Whether they want to admit it or not, it’s part of their budget. Selling the same building three times Lawmakers are counting on the sale of the James R. Thompson Center to generate roughly $300 million in revenue this year. In fact, they’ve been including that expected revenue in their budgets for three years running now. The building still has not been sold and no potential buyer has been made public. Former Gov. Rod Blagojevich also tried and failed to sell the building, according to the Chicago Tribune. Deferred maintenance costs for the building are over $326 million and some real estate professionals doubt the $300 million price tag is even realistic. Fund sweeps The spending plan also relies on sweeping around $800 million from other state funds. This is an all too common gimmick that lawmakers use as a crutch to avoid spending within their means. The Volcker Alliance has noted, “A basic tenet of budgeting is that one-time revenues should fund only one-time expenditures and that recurring revenues should cover obligations that come due every year.” Spending on the operating budget should be entirely financed through annual recurring revenues, primarily meaning taxes, not one-time revenue infusions. Unfortunately, due to Illinois policymakers’ inability to control spending, the state has a habit of sweeping funds intended for dedicated purposes and issuing bonds to pay for pensions or operating costs. Lawmakers have transferred money out of the budget stabilization fund every year since 2003. In all but five of the last 15 years, the state has either borrowed from state funds, issued bonds, or swept funds to pay for operations. The difference between a fund sweep and borrowing from a fund is that sweeps do not have to be paid back. However, the state often “forgives” its borrowing from special funds and decides not to pay them back anyway. According to Truth in Accounting, Illinois has over 600 special funds. Special funds often have dedicated revenue sources apart from the general funds budget, such has user fees, licensing fees or regulatory penalties. While not all of these funds are well managed or necessary, many are self-funding and productive. For example, the State Crime Laboratory fund is financed by fees collected by circuit courts for criminal laboratory analysis performed by the Illinois State Police. The funds are supposed to be used only for expenses of state crime laboratories. The General Assembly swept over $150,000 out of this fund in fiscal year 2018. In addition to putting off tough choices about spending reductions, fund sweeps and borrowing are two reasons Illinois fails on financial transparency – these practices hide the real cost of government from residents and mislead bondholders about the sustainability of spending. The Illinois Policy Institute supports a proposed constitutional amendment filed this year that would end the practice of relying on fund sweeps and short term borrowing as “revenue” for the annual budget. Phony accounting practices Another long-running budget gimmick in Illinois is the use of cash-based budgeting. Under this system, revenues are counted in the year they are received. Meanwhile, expenses are counted only in the year they are paid, not the year they are incurred. Imagine if a household magically “balanced” its budget each month by not paying the electric bill. That’s the type of behavior cash-based budgeting hides in state government. The extent to which this accounting gimmick hides the true cost of Illinois government spending can be seen by comparing Illinois’ cash-based accounting to a system using generally accepted accounting principles, or GAAP. The crucial difference between these two methods is that GAAP includes what’s called “accrual-based” accounting. When comparing cash-based accounting to accrual-based accounting, it’s clear the state has underreported its true budget deficit by billions of dollars each year. The true budget deficit for fiscal year 2017 alone was at least $6.6 billion worse than official reporting, and lawmakers’ assumptions, suggest. In addition to the traditional reporting lawmakers use when planning the budget each year, the Illinois comptroller releases a Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, or CAFR, which uses accrual-based accounting. The problem is that the CAFR doesn’t come out until months after the fiscal year ends, making it useless for the budget planning process. Due to the many other gimmicks in the spending plan, the CAFR that comes out after the end of fiscal year 2019 is likely to show a worsening of Illinois’ net fiscal position.  A better path forward The same day lawmakers were declaring victory and calling their bipartisan negotiations a “love fest”, Moody’s Investors Service warned that the state needs to address its pension liabilities and unfunded bill backlog sooner rather than later. “A failure to adopt mitigating strategies soon will greatly increase the state’s risk that these rising costs will become unaffordable without severe public service cuts,” the report stated. The recent spending plan does nothing to address the long-term challenges facing Illinois. If any of the speculative financial assumptions made by lawmakers fail to result in expected savings or revenues, the state’s challenges will be even more difficult to deal with next year. Illinois lawmakers have already proven they cannot exercise fiscal restraint on their own and have skirted the existing balanced budget requirement in the state constitution. To fix this problem, Illinois should adopt a spending cap amendment to the Illinois Constitution that ties lawmakers’ ability to spend money to taxpayers’ ability to pay for it. A spending cap is a commonsense solution that received bipartisan support in the General Assembly this year. Proposed amendments would cap annual increases in general funds spending to the 10-year average growth rate in the state’s per capita GDP. While it is too late for constitutional amendments to save this year’s budget, lawmakers can always voluntarily adopt a spending cap as a budgeting principle. In the long run, a spending cap could help the state get out of debt, build a rainy day fund to save for recessions and eventually cut taxes. Adam Schuster Director of Budget and Tax Research  Illinois Policy

Another time bomb for Chicago taxpayers

Editorial Board

Maybe you think the worst is over for Chicago Public Schools: Springfield sprang for millions in budget and pension relief last year. Time to lean back and sip an icy beverage.

Sorry to interrupt this reverie, but there are 1 billion reasons that you’re wrong. That is, the Chicago Teachers’ Pension Fund is short another $1 billion, according to the fund’s consultants.

Or put differently: If these estimates prove correct, taxpayers are likely on the hook for another $1 billion to shore up the teachers pension fund.

Why is this happening? Because of new estimates that reduce expected investment returns over the next decades by a half-percentage point, from 7.75 percent annually to 7.25 percent. Even a relatively small tweak creates a big hole. Hence, the fund is now estimated to be $11 billion in the red, up from $10 billion.

Over the years, CPS officials and City Hall have taken a two-step approach to the district’s money problems. Step 1: Hold out hand to lawmakers in Springfield. Step 2: Stick other hand into the pockets of Chicago taxpayers.

So we aren’t surprised at the response of CPS CEO Janice Jackson to questions about how the district will cope with the threat of escalating pension costs: “I think the biggest plan is to continue to lobby for additional funding to support our schools.” That is, cue the first hand.

This is a familiar story in Illin-owe. Other distressed Chicago and Illinois public pension funds struggle with the prospect of insolvency — an inability to pay benefits as they come due. The state's unfunded pension liability is crowding out other priorities. Taxpayers can’t keep up. Some take the easy way out: They move. The exodus of residents from Chicago and Illinois continues briskly to other states with lower taxes.

We can’t prove that fear of an even higher tax burden will chase more Illinoisans out of state. But we do know that such dread is well-founded. Citizens who stick around almost certainly will suffer a bigger tax chomp to bail out a slew of public pension funds, local and state. Cue the second hand.

It’s inevitable for Chicagoans in particular because for many years, CPS foolishly deferred much of its required annual pension payment — with state complicity. Those liabilities don’t disappear. They mount. People still retire. They still expect pension checks.

Now the district faces enormous and ever-increasing pension payments because state law requires the Chicago teachers pension fund to be 90 percent funded by 2059. Its current funding is dismal — about 50 percent.

The more the fund earns in investments, the less it needs from taxpayers. Which brings us to the new math of investment earning expectations. The pension fund’s annual report shows a stellar return for the year ending June 30, 2017: about 12.53 percent. But the year before? That was a abysmal minus-0.27 percent.

Over the most recent 10 years, the fund has reaped about a 4.87 percent return. The 25-year return, encompassing years with higher interest rates, is better: 8.16 percent as of January 2018.

What will the next years hold? Who knows? As investment advisers always warn: Past returns aren’t a reliable indicator of future performance. And remember what former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in 2012 when his city’s chief actuary proposed lowering the assumed rate of return for the city’s five pension funds to 7 percent from 8 percent:

“The actuary is supposedly going to lower the assumed reinvestment rate from an absolutely hysterical, laughable 8 percent to a totally indefensible 7 or 7.5 percent,” billionaire Bloomberg scoffed. “If I can give you one piece of financial advice: If somebody offers you a guaranteed 7 percent on your money for the rest of your life, you take it and just make sure the guy’s name is not Madoff.”

Yet CPS is counting on 7.25 percent. Taxpayers, guess what that means for you.

(Scott Stantis)

Are you walking the line between prediabetes and a type 2 diagnosis?

Posted on March 28, 2018 by Virginia Tims-Lawson

Even doctors will tell you that type 2 diabetes is one of the most preventable diseases. But it takes willpower and commitment.

But let me ask you… would you rather work at eating better and being more physically active than resigning yourself to a lifetime of medication and possibly needles?

Well, if you’ve been told you’re teetering that fine line between prediabetes and a full-blown type 2 diagnosis, you are at a crossroads…

An old friend of mine, who happens to be a doctor, once told me that it’s easier to avoid disease than it is to cure it. That same doctor profoundly believed that food is medicine.

So if you decide to take a long hard look at your diet, for starters, I have some information you’re going to want to put to use…

Antioxidants are diabetes kryptonite

Of course, sugars and carbohydrates are the major foods you need to eat a whole lot less of, to put blood sugar spikes behind you. Every time your blood sugar spikes, you inch closer to that type 2 diagnosis.

Foods that help you maintain a healthier weight just so happen to also be the foods that can help you tame your blood sugar… like plenty of nutrient-rich fresh vegetables and lean meats. And don’t forget to avoid the processed stuff like the plague.

But to really ramp up your anti-diabetes diet, make the most of what you eat by choosing foods highest in antioxidants, and here’s why…

Several studies have shown that certain nutrients, such as vitamins C and E, lycopenes and flavonoids were associated with a reduction in type 2 diabetes risk. But most recently, a team at the Center of Research in Epidemiology and Population Health in Villejuif, France, suspected there might be a further dietary link.

Since these previous studies looked only at isolated nutrients, not at the total antioxidant capacity of the diet, the researchers set out to verify whether overall diet, according to its antioxidant capacity, is associated with diabetes risk.

They followed 64,223 women for 35 years. Each participant completed a dietary questionnaire at the beginning of the study, including detailed information on more than 200 different food items.

Using this information, together with an Italian database providing the antioxidant capacity of a large number of different foods, the team calculated a score for “total dietary antioxidant capacity” for each participant. The group then analyzed the associations between this score and the risk of diabetes occurrence during the follow-up period.

The results were clear.

Women with the highest antioxidant scores had a reduction in diabetes risk of 27 percent compared with those with the lowest scores.

In fact, diabetes risk diminished with increased antioxidant consumption up to a level of 15 mmol/day, which could be achieved through eating antioxidant-rich foods such as dark chocolate, tea, walnuts, prunes, blueberries, strawberries or hazelnuts… to name a few.

The foods and drinks that contributed the most to a high dietary antioxidant score were fruits and vegetables, tea and red wine (consumed in moderate quantities).

Getting more antioxidants in your diet

So, if you want to stay healthy and keep that type 2 diagnosis far, far away, it looks like getting more antioxidants in your diet could certainly help.

To do this, you’ll need to eat plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables.

If you prefer your vegetables cooked, just remember these few things to preserve their antioxidant capacity:

• Don’t peel

• Minimize chopping

• Don’t soak in water pre-cooking

• Cook quickly at a high heat rather than slowly on a lower heat

• Don’t cook in copper pots (this reduces the amount of vitamin C)
• Frozen veggies are good sources of antioxidants
• Steam or microwave to retain the most nutritional value

You can also get a boost of antioxidant power from green tea or matcha (a type of green tea made from powdered tea leaves), which you can add to yogurt or your morning smoothie.

Another good way to up the amount of antioxidants you get in your diet is through a quality supplement. I get mine in Peak ResV+ Superfruits™.

Take charge with the power of antioxidants. Eat more fruits and vegetables, enjoy awesome antioxidant drinks like green tea and supplement wisely.

Sources:

sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/11/171109224048.htm

This entry was posted in Alternative Medicine. Bookmark the permalink.

Planned Parenthood Demands Disney Expose Young Girls To The Unthinkable

From Mommy Underground March 2018

Planned Parenthood officially went off the deep end and tweeted an outrageous post for the world to see.

Even worse, this post targeted young girls in the worst possible way.

And in typical Planned Parenthood fashion, they used Disney to lure young girls into accepting this horrific act.

Planned Parenthood fully knows little girls look up to Disney Princesses.

A Disney Princess has a way of capturing a little girl’s heart, and young girls grow up watching Disney and aspire to be Disney Princesses themselves.

But in a sick and twisted attempt to play to a little girl’s heart, Planned Parenthood actually tweeted Disney should make a pro-choice princess who has had an abortion.

Facing massive backlash, Planned Parenthood has since deleted the tweet, but the damage was already done.

LifeSite News reported:

“We need a disney princess who’s had an abortion We need a disney princess who’s pro-choice,” read a tweet from Planned Parenthood Keystone’s official Twitter account, published Tuesday morning.

It has since been deleted, but a screenshot of the tweet is preserved below.”

Planned Parenthood is trying to groom girls while they are young into thinking abortion is cool and normal.

But as Mommy Underground previously reported, Planned Parenthood does not care about girls and often cover up sexual abuse and misconduct.

And while it would be nice to think Disney would roll their eyes at this ridiculous tweet, the way Disney has behaved lately; it’s certainly possible they’ll consider a princess whose

“had an abortion.”

As Disney  continues to introduce pro-LBGT characters to their shows, nothing is out of the question when it comes to Disney, as reported earlier on Mommy Underground.

Sadly, families can’t count on the good old-fashioned Disney classics we all once knew.

And as for Planned Parenthood, they are coming after young girls with a vengeance.

Make no mistake; they will team up with any company possible to push abortions onto girls.

Their latest tweet shows nothing is too low for them.

The Daily Wire reported:

“Instead of teaching our youth to stand up for the voiceless and celebrate true diversity, Planned Parenthood wants our children to be desensitized to the death of the innocent, especially those with abnormalities whom they deem unworthy of life — in the name of feminism, of course.

And this is not even shocking.

This is modern day Western feminism in a nutshell.

Forget the (deceitful) days of “safe, legal, and rare,” abortion is “empowering.”

Just ask the #ShoutYourAbortion crowd.

To Planned Parenthood and company, female empowerment is to be achieved by signaling to young girls that your own pursuits outweigh the right to life of another, that killing your own unborn child is not an unholy fatal act, but a worthy and commendable feminist sacrament.”

Little girls as young as 3 and 4 grow up watching Disney.

To think Planned Parenthood has deemed it acceptable to push the pro-abort message onto innocent preschoolers is beyond unconscionable.

Whatever remaining conscience Planned Parenthood has, is now seared. Their hearts are hardened, and no woman, no matter how young, is off limits to them.

Conservatives must speak up and stand as a barrier and shield young girls from the hands of the enemy.

This Childhood Experience Can Be Scary For Parent and Child

This Childhood Experience Can Be Scary For Parent and Child – What You Need To Know

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As parents, we do everything we can to make sure that our kids are healthy and safe; that they are given stimulation, stability, and education.  While we can control many of these factors, there are some aspects of parenting that are somewhat out of our control.

When our children are sick or scared, we do everything in our power to help them feel better.  It can be hard to be a kid sometimes – and hard to watch our children go through things that we don’t know how to fix.

One such childhood experience is a phenomenon that can be frightening for our children – and perhaps even more frightening for moms and dads – but if we arm ourselves with a bit of information, our fears may be “put to rest.”

Having nightmares is a normal part of life for both adults and children. Sometimes they can be triggered by upsetting events, a scary movie, or for no apparent reason at all.

While it is hard to see our children have a nightmare, we often know exactly how to settle them down and allay their fears.  However, there is another nighttime sleep issue that can be more confusing and upsetting for both parent and child – night terrors.

So what is the difference between a nightmare and a night terror, and what should parents be on the lookout for?  And, more importantly, what can we do to help our little ones feel better?

Romper.com reported:Professional Sleep Consultant Christine Stevens tells Romper that when you know what you’re looking for, it’s pretty easy to tell the difference between night terrors and nightmares.

Neither nightmares nor night terrors are actual health concerns, but they are understandably distressing experiences for parents who feel responsible for their children’s peace of mind. Sometimes seizure-like episodes accompany night terrors, which might tempt you to make a trip to the emergency room, but they are actually not harmful.

“Night terrors can be scary to watch, but if you try to talk to your child, their reply might be just babbling or incoherent talk because they aren’t really awake. During night terrors, children will tend to scream out and the event can last anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes.” When a child has a nightmare on the other hand, Stevens says he or she will be able to converse with you and tend to recall some or most of the details of the dream.

One of the most noticeable differences between nightmares and night terrors are that true night terrors may manifest themselves in physical symptoms experienced by your child.

They can be longer lasting and difficult to come out of — as opposed to a nightmare, from which a child will typically awaken more rapidly and be more responsive to a parent’s calming techniques.

Night Terrors Resource Center reported on some of these physical symptoms. Characteristic behaviors of a child undergoing night terrors are that he or she could:

• Yell or scream after being deep asleep
• Bolt upright in bed
• Move around in bed, often uncontrollably or violently as if having a seizure
• Appear agitated, with a rapid pulse
• Be very difficult to wake up
• Be impossible to calm or console during the night terror
• Be confused if awoken
• Get out of bed completely as if sleepwalking, possibly getting hurt

With night terrors, children are not actually dreaming and will rarely remember what was going on during the night terror. Children who have night terrors are more likely to sleep walk and have bedwetting. If your child has these issues, then what look like seizures or panic attacks during sleep may more likely be night terrors.

While these symptoms may seem terrifying in themselves – and probably more for the parent than the child – they do not appear to create any health risk.

Night terrors may be part of a sleep disorder called parasomnia, which can involve abnormal or erratic movements, strange behaviors, and a range of emotions.  Night terrors are most common between the ages of 4 to 12, though they can appear at any age.  Researchers have found they occur more frequently in boys, and that there may be a genetic connection.

Studies have shown that they can be related to heightened stress or extreme fatigue, perhaps secondary to some kind of drastic change in routine or emotional stress caused by divorce or the illness or death of a family member.

It is estimated that half a million children annually will develop night terrors, and they can even occur in infants.  They can be chronic, happening nightly, or infrequent, and usually occur in the first few hours of deep sleep.

Romper.com continued with advice from Christine Stevens in dealing with nightmares and night terrors:

Nightmares require more talking with the kid. “If your child has had a nightmare,” Stevens says, “It’s best to be supportive and reassure them that bad dreams are normal; it’s simply the way their brains process information. Try to help them think of something more positive as they go back to sleep.”

If your child is experiencing night terrors, you should discuss it with your pediatrician, who may recommend seeing a therapist or sleep consultant.  While these terrors are not physically dangerous, it is wise to rule out any emotional trauma or other causes that you may not be aware of.

In either case, nightmares and night terrors just require some extra love and care from mom and dad.  In fact, it may be more traumatic for the parent than the child.  If you remain calm and supportive, and assure your child that they are safe, they should be able to get back to a peaceful slumber with little problem.

Revelations about Russian cyberattacks on the U.S. energy grid

Russian attacks on energy grid spark alarm

BY MORGAN CHALFANT - 03/25/18 08:19 PM EDT 

Revelations about Russian cyberattacks on the U.S. energy grid are sparking new fears in Washington about the growing threat to the energy sector.

The developments have some officials worried that Moscow or another nation state could execute a disruptive cyberattack targeting the U.S. power grid.

"The next Dec. 7 won't be airplanes and torpedoes coming at Pearl Harbor, it's going to be triggered with an attack on our energy grid with rolling blackouts and chaos," Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, said this week. 

Officials with the Department of Homeland Security and FBI revealed last week that Russian hackers have staged cyberattacks against the energy sector and other critical infrastructure since 2016. They linked a coordinated hacking campaign the security community had been tracking for months to the Russian government.Officials issued a public alert describing how hackers penetrated commercial entities on the fringes of the energy sector to compromise their intended victims. They were ultimately able to gain access to information on industrial control systems, technology used to power critical services like electric power and water.

In one case, hackers remotely accessed a human-machine interface, a device used by individuals to operate large industrial control systems — meaning they could have shut off power.

"They were on machines that were on the operational network that had the control panel not only monitoring but also control for systems that were generating power, generating electricity," Eric Chien, technical director at cybersecurity firm Symantec, said.

Lawmakers and other officials in Washington have sounded the alarm about potential cyber threats to the energy grid over the last year, after attacks took down power in parts of Ukraine in 2015 and 2016. Moscow is suspected in both attacks.

Newly identified strains of malware targeting industrial control systems — which are very rare — have underscored the threat. Last June, researchers released details on the malware linked to the 2016 attack in Ukraine. And in December, security firms identified malware targeting safety systems manufactured by Schneider Electric that shut down operations at an unknown industrial plant in the Middle East.

Experts note that the decentralized nature of the U.S. power grid — which is itself comprised of many small grids — means that it would take several simultaneous cyberattacks to take down power across a wide swath of the country.

But the latest revelations of Russian attacks spurred new concerns about the ability of hackers to breach power systems and other critical infrastructure, which are largely owned and operated by private companies.

"I am very much concerned, not only [about] Russia but any enemy, domestic enemy or foreign enemy," Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), who sits on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, told The Hill. "Our energy sector is very vulnerable to invasive attacks."

The alert issued last week suggests that the Russians were collecting intelligence on control systems that could ultimately be used to stage disruptive or destructive attacks.

Those threats have been noticed at the Department of Energy, which last month announced plans to create a new office devoted to cybersecurity and energy security. The department's cyber funds would get a boost under President Trump's proposed fiscal 2019 budget, amid cuts to other programs.

In recent months, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which sets mandatory standards for grid operators, has also proposed a series of new rules governing cybersecurity and cyber incident reporting.

Energy Secretary Rick Perry addressed the Russian cyberattacks on Thursday during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. Perry assured lawmakers the Trump administration was taking steps to stop attacks on the grid, though he refused to go into detail in a public setting.

"We're making, I think, every effort to protect the electrical grid from those types of attacks," Perry said.

When asked by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) if the attacks were an act of war, Perry said he would "tend to agree."

Protecting the grid requires the Energy Department to coordinate with private companies in the energy sector and the Department of Homeland Security, which is responsible for protecting critical infrastructure from cyber and physical threats.   

Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas), who heads the Homeland Security subcommittee focused on cyber issues, told The Hill that his panel would examine the Russian attacks as part of its oversight role. Still, he expressed confidence that Homeland Security is responding adequately to the threat, citing the cyber expertise of Kirstjen Nielsen, the department's new secretary.

"We're constantly following up when we get reports like that," Ratcliffe said.

"The Department of Homeland Security has never had more cyber expertise than it has right now," Ratcliffe added. "For all of the concerns about Russian meddling into our election and more generally into our critical infrastructure, we're better equipped to deal with it than we've been at any point in the past."

Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on energy, in an interview said he plans to make cybersecurity a big focus of an upcoming April 12 hearing with Perry.

The Russian grid attacks have widely been viewed in the context of Moscow's interference in the 2016 presidential election. The Trump administration disclosed the energy sector attacks when unveiling new sanctions on Moscow for meddling in the election and executing the global NotPetya malware attack last summer.

Still, the threat to the energy sector extends beyond Moscow. 

On Friday, U.S. officials indicted and sanctioned nine Iranian hackers for breaching hundreds of universities and other organizations to steal information on behalf of Iran's government and for financial gain.

One of their targets, officials said, was the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

"That is the agency that regulates the interstate transmission of electricity, natural gas and oil," Geoffrey Berman, U.S. attorney for the southern district of New York, said Friday.

"That agency has details of some of this country's most sensitive infrastructure."

Timothy Cama contributed.

TAGS KIRSTJEN NIELSEN JOHN RATCLIFFE DONALD TRUMP BOBBY RUSH RICK PERRY FRED UPTON CYBERATTACK CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE ENERGY GRID RUSSIA