Just before Congress adjourned last week, both houses passed a stopgap funding bill to keep most federal agencies, including NASA, funded at 2006 levels through February 15, leaving it to the next Congress to pass the pile of appropriations bills that the 109th Congress did not complete. Now the incoming chairmen of the House and Senate appropriations committees, Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) and Rep. David Obey (D-WI), have decided how they will, as they put it, “clean up the mess left behind” in January: by passing a continuing resolution that would last through the end of the fiscal year. This allows Congress to “clear the decks quickly”, as Byrd and Obey put it, so they can focus on the FY2008 budget, the Administration’s proposals for which will be released in early February.
What this means for NASA is that its programs will continue to be funded at FY06 levels: good news for some science and aeronautics programs that were facing cuts in the 2007 budget, perhaps, but not so good for the exploration program, as a Space News article [subscription required] notes. The agency overall was expecting a minor budget increase, but exploration in particular was planning on a $900-million bump over 2006 to fund work on Ares 1 and Orion. (However, NASA may get some additional flexibility on how it distributes funding within the agency.)
One bright note: the continuing resolution will be earmarks-free, according to the Byrd-Obey statement. The statement adds, “We will do our best to make whatever limited adjustments are possible within the confines of the Republican budget to address the nation’s most important policy concerns.” NASA, though, probably is not among the nation’s most important policy concerns at this time.
