http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/04/27/nasa.budget/index.html


NASA budget meets trouble in Congress

(SPACE.comexternal link) -- NASA's space exploration vision is stalling in the U.S. House of Representatives where key lawmakers say Congress has neither the details nor the dollars needed to fully support U.S. President George W. Bush's 2005 budget request for the agency.

The Republican and Democratic leaders of the House appropriations panel that holds the U.S. space agency's purse strings warned NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe during an April 21 budget hearing that they are unwilling to sign off on NASA's new exploration-driven agenda without more details and debate.

Rep. John Walsh, R-New York, chairman of the House Appropriations Veterans Affairs, Housing and Urban Development and independent agencies subcommittee, told O'Keefe he would give the space exploration vision a fair hearing, but was reluctant to approve the money NASA says it needs to set off in the new direction.

"I cannot commit this Congress and future Congresses to a program that is undefined," Walsh said.

Walsh's Democratic counterpart, Rep. Allan Mollohan of West Virginia, said while he was "conceptually" supportive of NASA's moon and Mars exploration strategy, he does not think Congress should fund what he called "a major overhaul of NASA programs" without Congress first authorizing such changes through separate legislation.

"We are being asked to approve a wholesale reordering of NASA programs by approving a series of 2004 operating plans and then to ratify these changes in your 2005 budget -- all without the benefit of appropriate debate and deliberation and without sufficient budgetary detail or program cost projections," Mollohan said. "You are in effect asking the Appropriations Committee alone to approve and implement in less than a year a proposal that will yield fundamental change in the agency in the next 15 years."

NASA is seeking $16.2 billion for 2005, an $866 million increase over the agency's 2004 budget. O'Keefe said most of the new money would go toward returning its three remaining space shuttles to flight status and getting on with international space station assembly. NASA's new vision calls for completing the space station by 2010 and then retiring the space shuttle so that funding for those two programs can be shifted toward the new exploration goals.

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