The House Science Committee released its “Views and Estimates” about the Preisdent’s FY07 budget proposal earlier today. The report outlines the committee’s (or, rather, the Republican members of the committee; more on the Democrats below) observations and opinions about the budget. Regarding NASA, the report comments on cutbacks in science and aeronautics programs:
The significantly reduced growth of the Science Directorate is of serious concern to the Committee. These reductions will necessitate the cancellation or lengthy deferral of several planned earth science and space science missions.
[…]
The Committee is again concerned about the limited funding for NASA’s Aeronautics program. The budget cuts the program by 18.1%, down to $724.4 million. Reductions of this size may jeopardize NASA’s ability to retain critical skills and perform ground-breaking research in support of this nationally important industry.
In the section about NOAA, the report brings up the NPOESS program:
Also, the Committee remains concerned about cost overruns and technical challenges that have delayed the launch date for NOAA’s new polar satellite system, the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS)… However, additional funding will be required in future years, and the Committee is extremely concerned that NOAA has not explained how it can pay for those increases without damaging other programs.
There was also a brief mention of the Commerce Department’s Office of Space Commercialization:
The Committee urges support for this Office, which has played a useful role in promoting the commercial space industry. The Office needs to take a stronger role within the government and increase their efforts to support U.S. commercial space providers.
The Democratic members issued their own, much shorter assessment of the FY07 budget yesterday. That document makes no mention of NASA at all, but it does include a discussion about NPOESS that echoes their Republican colleagues:
We have serious concerns about the present and future budget implications of the National Polar-Orbiting Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) acquisition program. NPOESS is substantially over-budget and behind schedule. Final decisions about moving this program forward are now being decided through the Department of Defense’s Nunn-McCurdy process. The request offered by the Administration offers no room to maneuver as regards reasonable and prudent steps managers might otherwise take to limit the likely gaps in weather and climate data coverage implicit in this badly-managed program.
