By Jeff Foust on 2005 June 21 at 1:19 pm ET The Senate Commerce Committee has scheduled a markup hearing this Thursday at 10 am to handle, among other matters, a proposed NASA authorization bill. The committee’s science and space subcommittee has not held its own hearing on the bill, which doesn’t even have a bill number yet.
While earlier reports indicated that the House Science Committee’s space subcommittee would also meet this week to mark up its version of a NASA authorization bill, committee communications director Joe Pouliot said today that the subcommittee will likely meet later next week to mark up the bill. The full committee, meanwhile, has scheduled a hearing for next Tuesday, June 28, at 10am with NASA administrator Michael Griffin.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 June 21 at 1:09 pm ET With all the discussion of late about the politics of space weaponization, I couldn’t help but pass along this commentary identifying the latest threat to peace in the cosmos. (Warning: we recommend that you complete any beverage you may be drinking before viewing this article. We cannot be held responsible for any damage that may be caused to your keyboard, laptop, etc., if you spit up said beverage while reading this article.)
By Jeff Foust on 2005 June 20 at 6:55 am ET I have written here in the past about false dichotomies: the strawman choices columnists and editorial writers, among others, develop in an effort to build up their own pet projects at the expense of NASA. The latest example is a column Sunday by Tom Schmitt, publisher of the Council Bluffs (Iowa) Daily Nonpareil. Most of Schmitt’s column deals with the rejection by the House to provide additional funding for drug enforcement activities. The amendment to the appropriations bill that would have added money for those programs was rejected, Schmitt claims, because it would have taken money from other programs, including NASA:
I don’t care if NASA’s funding would have had to be cut. Fighting a drug that harms Americans, particularly young Americans, is far more important than another rocket being sent to another far a way [sic] planet.
And there you have it. We can either spend money on combating illegal drug abuse, or we can spend that money launching “another rocket” to “another far a way planet.” No consideration is given to other programs whose funding was spared, with the exception (oddly enough) of the DEA.
This example is particularly disappointing to me: the Daily Nonpareil was my local newspaper growing up, oh so long ago.
As noted here earlier this month, the House appropriations bill includes a provision for NASA to engage in an awareness campaign targeting the general public. Perhaps such an effort should be designed in such a way to make the agency’s efforts seem less, well, frivolous, and thus less likely to be on the short end of these false choices.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 June 18 at 2:31 pm ET I wrote in the previous post that while the House has passed the appropriations bill that includes NASA, there was no sign of when the Senate would take action. Oops, my bad. The Senate Appropriations Committee’s Commerce, Justice, and Science subcommittee is scheduled to mark up its appropriations bill in a hearing Tuesday afternoon. The full committee is then scheduled to take up the bill on Thursday afternoon.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 June 16 at 8:24 pm ET By the very wide margin of 418-7, the full House passed HR 2862, the appropriations bill that includes $16.5 billion for NASA. There were no other NASA-related amendments posed during the final hours of debate on the bill. Needless to say, NASA administrator Michael Griffin is happy to get the budget passed. Now it’s on to the Senate, which appears to be in no particularly hurry to take up its version of the appropriations bill.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 June 16 at 7:46 am ET The full House continued its debate on HR 2862 Wednesday, handing a number of proposed amendments. The House did approve, on voice votes, two NASA related amendments. One, by Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX), would “prohibit the use of funds from being available to deny the production of safety reports regarding the NASA Space Shuttle program and the International Space Station.”
The other, submitted by Rep. Chris Chocola (R-IN), would “prohibit the use of funds for NASA to employ any individual under the title ‘artist in residence.'” I haven’t seen yesterday’s Congressional Record yet to look at the details of the floor debate on this amendment in particular, but this appears to be prompted by this one-page report by the Republican Study Committee which targeted NASA’s $20,000 (yes, that’s all) stipend to Laurie Anderson as the agency’s artist in residence. There’s a heated debate on this at Redstate.org.
One non-NASA, but important, amendment, to curtail some of the provisions of the Patriot Act, was approved by the House 238-187. As noted here earlier this week, OMB has made it clear in a memo to Congress that if “any amendment that would weaken the USA PATRIOT Act were included in a bill presented to the President for his signature, the President’s senior advisors would recommend a veto.” (The same memo, by the way, also notes that the “Administration appreciates the Committee’s strong support for NASA,” by effectively fully funding the President’s budget proposal.)
By Jeff Foust on 2005 June 15 at 7:48 am ET (No, there is no irony or sarcasm intended in this headline.) The Houston Chronicle reports that House Majority Leader Tom DeLay met with members of Citizens for Space Exploration (known until last year by the clunky moniker “National Keep It Sold”), who were in Washington for their annual lobbying trip. (DeLay also spoke to the group last year.) According to the Houston Chronicle, DeLay, a self-described “space nut”, told the attendees that the “space community still needs every bit and every dollar of help it can get” and that those lobbying Congress need to “give them all the facts, but don’t hide your passion… It’s not enough to convince us. You have to stir us, inspire us and make us see the possibilities that the future holds.”
According to the article, Citizens for Space Exploration has 130 members in Washington for the trip, with plans to meet with 230 House and Senate offices. Those visits include every office of the Texas delegation except that of Republican Congressman Kenny Marchant, of the Dallas-Fort Worth area, who declined to meet with the group for unspecified reasons.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 June 15 at 7:34 am ET You probably aren’t too surprised to find out that Tuesday’s hearing by the House Science Committee’ space subcommittee didn’t cover a lot of new ground about space flight. It was successful in garnering media attention, given that this was the first Congressional hearing featuring a witness testifying from space, but the questions asked by members were either pretty basic or were policy-level issues that were beyond the scope of the three witnesses, all astronauts. It only got worse during the brief Q-and-A session with John Phillips, the astronaut on ISS; Congressmen acted more like giddy schoolkids, asking elementary questions about what Phillips can see from space and what orbit the ISS is in. (One Congressman, apparently alarmed by seeing Phillips standing upright, asked why he wasn’t floating; am I the only one who wish Phillips responded that he was wearing heavy boots? In any case, Phillips floated on cue.)
The press release by the committee about the hearing did offer one note of interest: the committee plans to hold a meeting later this month (no specific date given) where NASA administrator Michael Griffin will testify.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 June 14 at 7:58 pm ET The full House is taking up HR 2862, the Science, State, Justice, and Commerce appropriations bill, which includes NASA’s budget. Debate on the bill started today and will continue into tomorrow. Earlier today Rep. David Obey (D-WI), the ranking Democrat on the full House Appropriations Committee, introduced an amendment that would have transferred $200 million from NASA’s exploration programs to efforts to aid local police. Obey’s argument, the AP reported, was that human missions to Mars were “decades away” while local police needed additional funding now. The AP characterized the amendment as “a Democratic challenge” to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. The amendment failed on a voice vote and, later in the day, was rejected by a recorded vote of 196–230. The vote was largely along party lines, with all but 24 Democrats voting for it and all but 21 Republicans voting against it (excluding the 3 Republicans and 4 Democrats who did not vote.)
However, the bill faces another, very different, challenge tomorrow. Rep. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who caucuses with the Democrats but considers himself more of a socialist, plans to introduce an amendment to the bill that would curtail some of the powers of the Patriot Act regarding access to library and booksellers’ records. (He introduced a similar amendment last year, which failed in a 210–210 tie.) What does this have to do with NASA? The Office of Management and Budget issued a statement saying that it would recommend that the President veto any appropriations bill that included such language, according to Reuters.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 June 13 at 7:54 am ET One of the often overlooked, but significant, provisions of the new space transportation policy is that NASA must cooperate with the Defense Department and submit a joint recommendation to the President on the development of any new heavy-lift vehicle to meet potential exploration-unique requirements.” The provision is interesting because the DOD is widely perceived as having a preference for an EELV-derived system, as a way to provide additional support for EELV manufacturers Boeing and Lockheed Martin and take some of the load of supporting the two companies off the Pentagon. New NASA administrator Michael Griffin, on the other hand, has stated a preference in public for using a shuttle-derived heavy-lift vehicle. Space News reports this week that Griffin and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld are scheduled to meet by the end of this month and “the agenda is devoted to that very issue.” One potential compromise, the article suggests, is a mixed-fleet approach with a shuttle-derived heavy-lift vehicle and a EELV-derived human-rated CEV vehicle, but any decision will likely not come easily.
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