SPACE.com -- NASA Supporters In Congress Quietly Mobilizing

Facilities May Suffer Most From Budget Cuts

House Votes Massive Cuts to NASA

NASA May Face Steep Personnel Cuts


	NASA Supporters In Congress Quietly Mobilizing By Frank Sietzen, Jr. Washington Bureau Chief posted: 07:24 am ET 28 July 1999

NASA supporters on Hill quietly mobilizing

WASHINGTON -- House supporters of NASA are licking their wounds Wednesday as the effects of a massive cut to the agencys Fiscal year 2000 budget reverberated around Capitol Hill.

Few members criticized the Appropriations Subcommittee directly, but several NASA supporters suggested that the battle to save more than $1.3 billion in space agency funding was far from over.

Congressional sources told space.com that Florida Rep. Dave Weldon, who earlier Tuesday blasted the cuts, was quietly moving to mobilize House supporters to get the funds restored either in the full Appropriations Committee or via a House-Senate conference later in early fall.

Weldon had just attempted to restore the Congressional Aerospace Caucus to activity after years of lying dormant; it was suggested to space.com that the fight for NASA might help revive the group and serve as an early rallying point.

Weldon said Tuesday he would support restoration of the cuts. "I will be making every effort to restore the funding in the appropriations process," Weldon said in a prepared statement. "NASA has done more than its fair share of budget trimming to live within tighter fiscal constraints," he added.

But Weldon and other Congressional sources indicated that it was still early in the process by which Congress makes the final allocations for federal programs and agency budgets. "They have to move slowly on this, because things might be solved (in the full committee)," one source told space.com late Tuesday.

House Science Committee Chair R. James Sensenbrenner, (WI) expressed disappointment with the depth of the cuts and said he would work to see the money restored in the full appropriations vote. That action was likely on Friday. Privately many supporters indicated the best hope for NASA funding lay with the Senate, although its mark-up had not been done yet and it, too could approve of the same level of cuts as has the House appropriations subcommittee.

No matter what their public views, most members of Congress who care about NASA knew that some form of deep cuts were almost certain, given the tight budget situation Congress faces. Under the terms of the balanced budget agreement, tight caps on federal spending were set in 1995. The spending levels have now been reached, and without a bipartisan agreement to raise the levels, programs that are not high on the Congressional priority list such as space are targets for reductions.

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