WASHINGTON (States News Service) - The partisan lines on the NASA budget debate are beginning to blur, as a New York Democrat plans to recommend further cuts in the space agency's funding.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-New York) will introduce an amendment on the floor to pull another $305 million from the space station budget to go towards public housing, which he believes is "severely under-funded" in the VA-HUD bill, spokesman Brett Heimov said.
Nadler thinks that the ISS will not really be able to run any scientific experiments that the Shuttle couldn't run in another form for much less money, Heimov said. Nadler is a "space buff" who decide this based on "his own personal research," Heimov said.
"He believes in NASA, he believes in technology development," Heimov said. "He just feels the space station has gotten to the point where it is not serving its purpose. It would be a waste of money."
Also crossing party lines is Rep. David Weldon (R-Florida) who in July was one of the first to declare that he would fight the cuts. Weldon's 15th district includes Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center, the busiest spaceport in the world.
"Unless there are changes to the NASA budget, he plans on voting against the entire bill," said Weldon's legislative director, Stuart Burns.
Burns said Weldon is not sure whether he will offer an amendment to the spending bill, but he plans to speak on the floor during the debate.
Weldon has already spoken to Florida Senators Bob Graham and Connie Mack about NASA's chances once the Senate takes up the VA-HUD bill in late September,
Burns said. None of the three Florida lawmakers will sit on the conference committee since none is on an appropriations committee.
Leading the pro-NASA forces will probably be Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland). The 10-term congressman's fifth district includes NASA's Goddard center, and Hoyer has always fought hard for the agency. However, spokeswoman Debra DeShong said that while he will make a public appeal and a speech on the floor asking for a restoration in NASA funding, he will not offer an amendment that could do it.
"There isn't any money to do it with," DeShong said, referring to the spending limits placed on the bill. Instead, Hoyer will make "a number of comments" on the floor.
"His point will be that not only does NASA do research and make technology breakthroughs in space science, but there are so many practical things that NASA does that we never even realize," DeShong said.
Hoyer is also working with a number of other Representatives in Colorado, Texas and California, she said.
The VA-HUD appropriations bill is scheduled for debate in the House at the start of business tomorrow at 10 a.m. The Senate will then draft its version of the bill later this month.
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