Space Politics
Because sometimes the most important orbit is the Beltway…
February 24, 2005 at 12:51 pm
· Filed under Congress
The minority leadership of the House Appropriations Committee has announced its assignments of Democratic members to the new subcommittee structure. (This assignment took place last week; I had missed it before now.) The Democratic members of the Science, State, Justice, and Commerce subcommittee, the new subcommittee whose jurisdiction includes NASA, are:
Mollohan, previously the ranking Democrat on the VA-HUD subcommittee, will be the ranking member of this new subcommittee as well. Cramer, who had previously announced his assignment to this subcommittee, represents NASA MSFC, while Mollohan’s district includes NASA’s little-known Independent Verification and Validation Facility.
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I am trying to find the voting records of these people. http://www.vote-smart.org has a lot but no data on space policy issues. Does anyone know where I can find such data?
Mr. Walker wrote @ February 24th, 2005 at 10:10 pm
I pray Mr. Cramer conducts himself in a manner benefitting the entire space program. I fear he will be myopic and only work in the interests of MSFC.
Chris,
There are very few votes on the floor of the House that deal specifically with NASA or space policy in general. For example, the NASA budget is incorporated into a larger appropriations bill, which in turn has often been rolled into a larger omnibus budget bill. As a result, members of Congress don’t have much a voting record one way or another on space issues.
If you’re really curious about these members’ positions on space (if, in fact, they have given much thought to the subject), you can always contact their offices, especially if you’re a constituent.
Thanks Jeff. Do you have any idea how these people voted on HR 5382?
Accouring to the House’s web site, Cramer voted yeah. The other Reps should be in there as well.
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2004/roll541.xml
I would caution that how the members of the subcommittee voted on HR 5382 is not necessarily indicative of their position on NASA funding. 5382 was a regulatory bill, not an appropriations measure, and had little, if anything, to do with NASA. (Some might stretch the point and argue that there’s an intersection between 5382′s promotion of commercial spaceflight with the potential for a growing role for commercial ventures in NASA, but that would probably be reading too much into too few tea leaves.)
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