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Senate Recommends $200 Million Cut To NASAs 2003 Budget
By Brian Berger
Space News Staff Writer
posted: 12:25 pm ET
21 January 2003
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WASHINGTON After initially escaping the Senates budget axe, NASA now is facing a potential $200 million cut in its budget compared to the agencys 2002 spending plan WASHINGTON After initially escaping the Senates budget axe, NASA now is facing a potential $200 million cut in its budget compared to the agencys 2002 spending plan. Before breaking Jan. 17 for a three-day holiday weekend, the U.S. Senate recommended a 2.9 percent across-the-board cut to all the departments and agencies including NASA that are covered by an omnibus bill combining 11 unfinished appropriations bills into a single $400 billion spending package. Sources said the money was cut to free up additional funding for drought relief, education and other political priorities. The across-the-board reduction trimmed the amount the Senate had planned to give NASA for 2003 by about $440 million on top of the $76.5 million reduction the NASA bill sustained in December when Republicans re-wrote the spending bills drafted before Democrats lost control of the Senate in elections last fall. If the Senate recommendations become law, NASA would be looking at a roughly $14.7 billion budget, about $200 million less than it got for 2002 and about $300 million less than the White House requested. NASA fared much better in the House of Representatives. Appropriators there adopted a spending bill that would provide $15.3 billion for the space agency this year. A Senate source who follows NASA does not expect the cut to be restored before the Senate approves the omnibus bill. But the source pointed out that the House and Senate still have to conference to iron out differences between their bills. "I think in the end it wont be as bleak for NASA as it is looking right now," the source said.
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