NASA, NSF Appropriations Pass Senate Mark-ups With Flying Colors
Senate VA/HUD appropriations subcommittee chairwoman Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland) has pulled a rabbit out of a hat. According to late news reports yesterday, she managed to find funds within her allocation to provide both NASA and NSF with more money than requested by the Administration, even fully funding NASA’s space station. Mikulski had complained earlier that this would be nearly impossible, given the fact that her subcommittee was allocated $729 million less than it needed to support the President’s request for all the programs under its jurisdiction. A faithful station supporter, Mikulski held ongoing discussions with the Administration about where to find the funds for the NASA program without cutting into popular areas such as veterans’ affairs.
After the subcommittee mark-up yesterday morning, the VA/HUD appropriations bill (H.R. 4624) was sent to the full Senate Appropriations Committee. Yesterday afternoon, the full committee approved NSF and NASA funding at the levels recommended by Mikulski’s subcommittee.
Reports indicate that Mikulski found sufficient money for almost all of the programs within her subcommittee’s jurisdiction. Under her bill, NSF would receive $3.4 billion for fiscal year 1995, $200 million over President Clinton’s request, and $300 million over the House’s recommendation. NASA would receive a total budget of $14.4 billion, $100 million over the request, and $400 million over the House recommendation. The space station would be fully funded at $2.1 billion. Mikulski also reportedly was able to fund veterans’ programs and public housing programs at levels above the request. According to early news accounts, most of the cuts were taken from Section 8 rental assistance payments, and accounting changes to federal disaster relief and the national service program.
The House VA/HUD subcommittee, chaired by Louis Stokes (D-Ohio), was able to scrape together enough to fully fund the space station, and NASA’s space science programs, by trimming other programs within the space agency, including the shuttle program and a replacement Tracking and Data Relay satellite (TDRS). Stokes’ subcommittee had a larger allocation to begin with (by $316 million) than did the Senate subcommittee. There are no reports, however, that Mikulski made similar cuts within NASA’s budget. Stokes’ bill was approved by the full House on June 29, after an unsuccessful floor attempt to cancel the space station.
Future FYIs will carry more details of the mark-up, and selections from the NASA and NSF portions of the committee report as soon as it is available. The bill now goes to the Senate floor, where last year a 59-40 vote tabled (killed) an amendment by Dale Bumpers (D-Arkansas) to terminate the station.
