The conventional wisdom regarding the reorganization of the appropriations subcommittees in the House and Senate is that this is a beneficial move for NASA: no longer does the space agency have to compete with low-income housing and veterans’ programs for funding. The Commerce, Justice, and State departments all seem like easier competition for funding, the argument goes. The fact that this reorg was instigated by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, a strong backer of NASA, would seem to confirm this.
Taking a different viewpoint at last night’s Women in Aerospace event was Michelle Burkett, a member of the House Appropriations Committee minority staff. Back in the days of the VA-HUD-independent agencies subcommittee, she said, it was not NASA but HUD that served as “the piggy bank”, as appropriators took money from the agency, and played other accounting tricks, to fund other programs in the subcommittee. Under the new structure, she warned, State and Justice in particular may be viewed as having a higher priority for funding than NASA. Since most other agencies got a cut in the 2006 budget proposal, “those holes are going to have to be filled”, she warned, and appropriators could look to NASA to help fill them.
Things may be slightly better on the Senate side, she said, since this week’s reorganization moved the State Department out of the same subcommittee NASA was moved into. (The fact that the subcommittee chair and ranking member, Sens. Shelby and Mikulski respectively, are strong NASA supporters, can’t hurt either.) On the House side Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), who chairs the Science, State, Justice, and Commerce subcommittee, is a strong supporter of the Vision for Space Exploration, she said, but nonetheless “some balancing [of the budget proposal] will, in fact, happen.” She also noted that the House may revisit in the next week its new subcommittee structure, perhaps moving State out of its current subcommittee to better match the Senate’s new structure.
