AAS Public Policy Blog

Charles F. Bolden, the president’s nominee for NASA administrator, is scheduled to testify in front of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation committee today at 2:10PM. The nominee for Deputy Administrator, Lori Garver, will testify as well. A webcast link should appear on the committee schedule page shortly before the hearing begins.

Several nominees at other agencies are scheduled for the hearing as well. The full list is below:

• Nominee: Mr. Charles F. Bolden, Jr., to be Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
• Nominee: Ms. Lori Garver, to be Deputy Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
• Nominee: Ms. Deborah A.P. Hersman, to be Chairman and Member of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB)
• Nominee: Mr. Richard A. Lidinsky, Jr., to be Commissioner of the Federal Maritime Commission
• Nominee: Ms. Polly Trottenberg, to be Assistant Secretary for Transportation Policy of the United States Department of Transportation (DOT)

The Senate appropriations bill covering NSF and NASA is out. You can see the press release which summarizes the bill as well as Sen. Milkuski’s statement.

The Senate’s NSF number is $6.916 billion, a 6.6% increase over FY 2009, but lower than the administration’s 8.5% increase request and the House bill’s 6.9% increase. However, the NASA number matched the administration’s request of $18.686 billion, with none of the cuts to manned spaceflight present in the House bill.

The latest FYI discusses the bill, as well as pointing to the administration’s response to the House bill. For example OMB says in the statement, “The Administration is concerned with the reduction of $670 million from the President’s FY 2010 request for Exploration Systems. This large reduction would likely cause major negative impacts to any options that may emerge from the ongoing blue ribbon [Augustine committee] review of U.S. human space flight plans.”

The conference report for the Senate bill is also available. Either on the Thomas Web Site or the full PDF from the GPO site.

Here is the section of the report on the NSF, or the text of the NASA Science section.

It’s interesting to note where the Senate CJS appropriation deviates from the President’s request. Overall, NASA Science receives $4.517 billion, where as the request was $4.477 Billion. By division the Senate versus Request are as follows:

Division - Request - Senate
Earth Science - $1.405B - $1.405B
Planetary - $1.346B - $1.355
Astro - $1.121B - $1.169B
Helio - $605M - $646M

In Astrophysics, $50 million is added to Cosmic Origins in a new line for servicing opportunities for science missions. (The House had added a similar amount in their appropriation bill ) The R&A request of $61.1 million is reduced to $60 million.

Within Planetary Science, notable changes from the request include an increase to Lunar Quest, in the form of $21 million for the International Lunar Network, and a reduction to Mars Exploration – specifically the “Other Missions and Data Analysis” line is reduced from a $162.1 million request to $150 million.

Within Heliophysics, the largest change is a $50 million appropriation to Solar Probe Plus, from a request of $3.4 million. Heliophysics R&A’s requested budget of $35.4 million is reduced to $31 million in the Senate bill, equal to FY 2009.

Below is the explanatory text directly from the Senate committee report that touches on a lot of these changes:

Read more »

Last week, NASA Acting Administrator Mike Scolese testified in front of the Senate Appropriations and Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation committees. Archived webcasts of the appropriations and authorization hearing are available.

During the appropriations hearing, there was a first – after their successful servicing mission of Hubble the shuttle astronauts testified from orbit. While there was a bit of an audio problem for a bit in the actual hearing room (we couldn’t hear the astronauts for a short while), the following Youtube clip seems to have uninterrupted audio of the astronauts testimony:

In other NASA news, as you have probably heard by now, President Obama has nominated former astronaut at retired Marine general Charles Bolden to run NASA, as well as Lori Garver as Deputy administrator.

Indications are that the Senate will end debate on the Omnibus appropriations bill left over from FY 2009 and pass the bill today, unaltered from the House version that passed last month.

The omnibus bill, a collection of several leftover appropriations bills from last year, contains considerable increases to science, compared to the funding levels of the continuing resolution.

CQ politics reports that confirmation votes on President Obama’s nominees for Science Advisor, John Holdren, and undersecretary of Commerce for oceans and atmosphere, Jane Lubchenco, are being prevented due to anonymous holds on their nominations. An earlier report indicated the hold was due to a single senator (Sen. Menedez of New Jersey) unrelated to the nominees themselves.

The House appropriations committee has posted links to a summary and Bill text in two parts.

The press release / summary confirms the House science numbers prevailed:

Science

• $1 billion total for NASA.
• $3 billion total for National Science Foundation (NSF).
• $2 billion total for Science at the Department of Energy including $400 million for the Advanced Research Projects Agency—Energy (ARPA-E). >
• $830 million total for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA).

Votes are possible today in the House. Congressional leadership has indicated they want President Obama to be able to sign the bill by President’s Day on Monday.

Several summaries are circulating today on the stimulus bill – these reports, out of the Speaker’s office, indicate Science did quite well. Specifically:

• Provides $3 billion for the National Science Foundation, for basic research in fundamental science and engineering – which spurs discovery and innovation.
• Provides $1.6 billion for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, which funds research in such areas as climate science, biofuels, high-energy physics, nuclear physics and fusion energy sciences – areas crucial to our energy future.
• Provides $400 million for the Advanced Research Project Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) to support high-risk, high-payoff research into energy sources and energy efficiency in collaboration with industry.
• Provides $8.5 billion for NIH, including expanding good jobs in biomedical research to study diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, cancer, and heart disease.
• Provides $1 billion for NASA, including $400 million to put more scientists to work doing climate change research.
• Provides $1.5 billion for NIH to renovate university research facilities and help them compete for biomedical research grants.

However, as of 3ET, there seems to be a delay in an official release of the final bill, so it may be just a bit early to know if these numbers are final.

Also, Reps. Holt and Eshoo argue for that science spending is stimulus today in The Hill. Representative Holt is one of three Ph.D. physicists in the House.

The Senate has name the following members to the House-Senate conference committee that will negotiate with the House the final version of the stimulus bill. They are:

Harry Reid (D-NV), Dan Inouye (D-HI), Max Baucus (D-MT), Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Thad Cochran (R-MS)

For some background reading on Conference committees check out this document from the Congressional Research Service.

Update House members too: David Obey (D-WI-07), Charlie Rangel (D-NY-15), Henry Waxman (D-CA-30), Jerry Lewis (R-CA-41), and Dave Camp (R-MI-04).

Update II The AAAS has some details on the R&D money in the stimulus bill.