WASHINGTON (States News Service) -- NASA's full $13.6 billion budget sailed through the Senate Friday afternoon to an uncertain future when the VA-HUD Appropriations bill containing the agency's funding passed without even a formal roll call vote.
The Senate bill will now go to conference with its companion House version, perhaps as early as Monday. The House bill includes more than $900 million in cuts to NASA.
The Republican leadership avoided making deep cuts to the bill by moving $7 billion from the embattled Labor-Health-Education bill, already drastically under-funded and destined to fail. Although that move angered Democratic leaders, the result was a VA-HUD bill so popular that it passed by an informal voice vote, with not a single vote against it.
But the issue may all become moot anyway, as President Clinton has promised to veto both versions of the bill.
"The Administration appreciates the Senate Committee's efforts to develop a bill that makes important improvements to the House bill," a White House statement said. "However, there continue to be significant problems with the Senate Committee bill that must be satisfactorily addressed before it is presented to the President."
The statement said the bill did not contain enough money for public housing and urban programs, for the environment, and for national service programs.
Despite that threat, Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., the ranking member of the spending subcommittee and an active space supporter, seemed upbeat about the future of NASA funding.
"I'm pleased that we were able to fully fund NASA at the requested level," Mikulski said. With the President's veto this week of the GOP's $792 billion tax cut, Mikulski said there is hope that Congress will be ready to "raise the spending caps in a couple of key areas."
Congress and the White House are operating under a 1997 agreement that limits the amount of money that can be spent in the 2000 budget. Mikulski and other members from both parties have repeatedly called for the lifting of the caps in the face of an unexpected budget surplus, but neither party's leadership has openly endorsed such a strategy yet.
Mikulski said that if more money does indeed become available, she would seek to restore the $100 million cut made in the Senate bill from NASA's earth science programs.
"I even hope to take it beyond last year's levels," she said.
Subcommittee Chairman Kit Bond, R-Mo., said he thought that money was better used for research in space commercialization and future space transportation technology.
The chairman of the House committee in charge of the bill, Rep. James Walsh, R-N.Y., said earlier that the tax cut veto "does free up some money -- there isn't any unanimity as to how much." He said some of that money could go to the VA-HUD spending bill.
The conference between House and Senate members scheduled for next week "won't be a sleeper," a Bond aide said, as the two versions have radically different dollar amounts attached to NASA and other programs. Walsh has indicated that it is unlikely that the final version of the bill will contain all of the increases from the Senate bill.
"I'm interested in helping to resolve the budgetary problems with NASA," Walsh said, "but what the level of funding is still has to be decided."
Since Clinton is threatening to veto even the Senate version of the bill, there is little chance he will accept a compromise bill with even less money for housing and other social programs.
That leaves NASA's funding where so many of its projects have gone - up in the air.
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