House Subcommittees Approve Budgets for NASA, NOAA

Space Subcommittee Chairman Steven Palazzo, R-Miss., said the bill ensures continued development of the next generation of human space flight and ensures fiscal responsibility. The bill ensures “efficient and effective utilization of the International Space Station” and it allows investment in the Space Launch System and Orion crew capsule, he said in opening remarks.

The bill eliminates proposals from the Obama administration that are aimed at consolidating NASA education programs into other agencies and beginning work on the asteroid retrieval mission, Palazzo said. The requisite work for the proposed education and public outreach reorganization “was not completed before the proposal was made to Congress, and very little effort was made to communicate the reasons for this change to Congress,” he said. The asteroid retrieval mission hasn’t been through any type of mission formulation review and “as recently as two weeks ago, NASA was still soliciting ideas on how to do the mission without any clear direction on its purpose, budget or technical requirements,” he said. The draft bill also proposes to scale back growth in the budget for the earth science program, he said.

Edwards criticized the bill’s proposal to cut NASA’s fiscal year 2014 funding by nearly $1 billion from the administration’s request of $17.7 billion. The account that funds management and operations at NASA field centers, including Goddard Space Flight Center and Kennedy Space Center, “has already been cut too much in recent years, and this bill would do further damage,” she said. Authorizing funding above sequestration levels doesn’t run contrary to the Budget Control Act, she said: “I have yet to find anything in that act that stipulates the funding committees can authorize."

Edwards’ amendment, which proposed to provide $700 million a year for commercial crew development and to maintain funding for earth sciences research, was opposed by several Republicans and supported by Democrats. The problem is the growth in mandatory spending, Palazzo said: “It will only get worse.” To ensure that NASA remains the leader in space is to reform mandatory spending or else sequestration levels will continue and NASA’s status will collapse, he said. “If we ignore the Budget Control Act, the bill is dead on arrival in the House and Senate.”

Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., urged members to be mindful of the deficit, which is approaching the $17 trillion mark. “It’s financial irresponsibility that has put us where we are today,” he said. “If we didn’t have financially irresponsible policies from both sides, we'd have plenty of money today to fund NASA."

Both the bill and the amendment put too much emphasis on manned space flight, said Rep. Dan Maffei, D-N.Y. There must be a cost-benefit analysis of landing human beings on Mars, he said. “Are we doing this for sentimental reasons” or “because it’s up there?” he said. The nation may get a bigger bang for its buck with unmanned or private sector-supported flights, he said.

During a later markup, the House Appropriations Commerce, Justice and Science Subcommittee approved an appropriations bill for the Department of Commerce, the Justice Department and other agencies. Its NASA appropriations include $576 million for space technology, $566 million to aeronautics and $3.67 billion to space operations. The bill includes funding above the request for National Weather Service operations “and a combined $1.8 billion for [the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s] two next generation weather satellite systems to provide the data that is essential to accurate warnings and forecasts,” said Subcommittee Chairman Frank Wolf, R-Va.