As expected, the House Appropriations Committee announced Wednesday a proposed change to its subcommittee structure that would eliminate three subcommittees, including the VA-HUD subcommittee that currently includes NASA. The proposed restructuring is somewhat different than what was previously reported: NASA (along with NSF) will not be moved to the Energy subcommittee but instead to the Commerce, Justice, and State subcommittee, which will be renamed the “Science, State, Justice and Commerce” subcommittee. According to CongressDaily, the change stemmed from concerns raised by senators (who have been in negotiations with the House on the topic) that NASA “would not be served well by having to compete for funds with nuclear programs and popular Army Corps of Engineers water projects.”
As the new subcommittee title suggests, NASA would be a much bigger player in this subcommittee than in the existing VA-HUD subcommittee: the Commerce-Justice-State subcommittee had a budget allocation of around $40 billion in FY05; adding NASA and NSF would bring that closer to $60 billion, still less than the roughly $90-billion VA-HUD subcommittee allocation. The new subcommittee will be chaired by Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA).
From here, the full House Appropriations Committee has to ratify the change, most likely during a reorganization meeting next week. The Senate, which had not been enthusiastic about the original reorganization plans, now seems more willing to accept the revised version, according to the CongressDaily article.
