WASHINGTON (States News Service) -- The top Democrat on the House Science Committee said he will be making "personal contact" with members of the House in an effort to get nearly $1 billion restored to NASA's budget when it comes to the floor. At the same time, he told space.com that a new report on operating costs for the ISS could become a sensitive issue for debate.

Rep. Ralph Hall, D-Texas, has long been a space supporter and was former chairman of the Space Subcommittee. "This isn't any time to be doing cutbacks on space, with the surplus and all," Hall said on Thursday. "This is a time to be reaching out."

The House will vote on the VA-HUD and Independent Agencies Appropriations bill, which includes the NASA budget, when Congress comes back from recess next month. The spending committee voted for a $900 million cut in the NASA budget authorized by the Science committee.

Hall has not spoken to anyone specifically yet, he said. He plans to meet with members and "go back over the figures and show them where the need is and shown them what it would cost to cut some of these things back," he said. Hall said in the past that NASA generates seven dollars in benefits for every dollar the government puts in.

"They need to put a billion back in the NASA budget and 150 million back in the shuttle budget. This is not the time to be cutting these things," Hall said Thursday.

He would like to work on an actual increase in NASA funding, not just restoring the budget to the agency's request. Possibly complicating the budget battle is a new report by the General Accounting Office, obtained by States News Service, that says NASA's estimate of $1.3 billion a year to operate the International Space Station is anything but definite. Titled "Space Station: Cost to Operate After Assembly is Uncertain," the report says accounting methods, the need to replace obsolete parts, and the unreliability of the Russian Space Agency's planned contribution could more than double NASA's estimate.

"It could be a hot potato," Hall said, "but I would expect the Republican leader [Science Committee Chair James Sensenbrenner, R-Wisc.] over there to work with me on that and I will work with him."

A Sensenbrenner aide said Tuesday that "at first impression, it appears the administration had low-balled the ISS cost estimate," but added that the Science Committee had no plans to act on the report yet and had no position.

Hall said he has a good relationship with Sensenbrenner, and expects to work with him on the issue once the committee has looked at the report. "If the GAO has some hard figures on that, I expect to work with them on it. You've got torelax to the inevitable."