Senator Calls for White House Summit on NASA Budget

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), chair of the Senate subcommittee responsible for NASA funding, formally pledged Thursday to again work with Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) to increase NASA funding by $1 billion. Mikulski also called for a space summit with the White House to ensure NASA gets the support and funding it needs.

"Today, with countries such as China, Iran and others seeking to establish their footprint in space, with a four-year delay in our ability to launch astronauts into orbit, and the need to maintain a balanced space program and promote innovation, we need a new dialogue with the president and the administration," Mikulski said Thursday during the first NASA budget hearing of the Senate Appropriations commerce, justice and science subcommittee, which she chairs. Mikulski compared the summit to one held 17 years ago under President George H.W. Bush, which helped pave the way for the creation of NASA's Mission to Planet Earth.

Mikulski plans to introduce an amendment to the regular NASA spending bill. At their hearing Thursday, Democrats and Republicans on the House Science Committee echoed Mikulski's sentiment that NASA is not slated to get enough money in fiscal 2008.

"Everyone bears some blame for the funding shortfalls, but the point I want to stress is that NASA continues to hold to its original schedule for the vision, but doing it with smaller budgets. Consequently, the stress on the agency is enormous," Rep. Ralph Hall (R-Texas) said at the hearing.

J.P. Stevens, Aerospace Industries Association vice president for space systems, praised Mikulski's efforts, saying "there are a lot of people on either side of the aisle that want us to stay in the human space flight business. The more we get together as a bipartisan group working on these issues the more likely we are in 2016 or 2018 to be able to still put a U.S. astronaut into space."

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