Or more specifically they passed “Motion To Concur In House Amdts To Senate Amdt To House Amdt To Senate Amdt To H.R. 2642.” As described previously, this includes funding for the NSF, NASA, and DOE Office of Science.
The money is included in a very broad war supplemental funding bill negotiated between the White House and the House of Representatives.
FYI has an excellent summary of NASA funding in the Commerce, Justice, Science appropriations bill in the Senate. You can also read the entire Senate Report.
I’ll try to write more about this later in the week - for now I will, like the FYI newsletter, quote the introduction to the Senate report.
NASA’s vision for space exploration maps out an aggressive role for the United States in manned space exploration. However, the potential costs are substantial and will likely be very difficult to maintain at the current estimated funding levels. In addition, the Committee feels strongly that NASA must show its commitment to those human spaceflight activities already underway. The Shuttle program and the construction of the International Space Station [ISS] continue to be the primary focus of the Nation’s manned space flight activities. Nevertheless, the replacements for the Space Shuttle’s manned and heavy lift capabilities must also be considered as part of any plan for continued human access to space but not to the detriment of existing obligations.
The Committee is concerned that NASA will neglect areas that only tangentially benefit, or do not fit within, the exploration vision. The Committee believes that NASA must work diligently to balance existing programs and priorities with its plans for the future. Counterbalancing future priorities against current programs places existing research and expertise in jeopardy and risks squandering significant Federal investments that may be essential to the exploration vision.
In addition, the Committee is concerned that the strong, balanced science program that has served the Nation so successfully for many years is being left behind rather than being nurtured and sustained. That science program has been based on a set of carefully crafted scientific strategies that are founded on scientific and technical merit, relevance to overall national needs, and broad consultation with the scientific community.”
In the span of a minute, the Senate Commerce, Justice, and Science committee passed the Senate version of the NASA Authorization Bill of 2008. You can read the committee press release here.
When the text of the bill is available online, I’ll update this post.
Large amounts of domestic spending, including new veterans’ benefits and money for science, passed the Senate today by a large margin of 75-22. You can read the text of the amendment as it relates to science funding here.
Democrats in the Senate planned to first try to pass a large package of domestic spending, and then if that failed, a smaller amendment geared only toward expanded education benefits for veterans. However, with the larger amendment passing, the second, more focused one was not considered.
The bill now goes back to the House, which failed to pass war funding supplemental but did pass some domestic spending.. Despite numerous searches of roll call votes and amendments, I can’t seem to find the text of the domestic spending amendment the House passed (and is mentioned in the Washington Post article.)
We’ll see how the House responds and if the House can muster a veto-proof margin for any supplemental it passes in finality. A coalition of Republicans against domestic spending, and Democrats against funding the war could mean that the House could not override a supplemental veto.
The AAAS takes a look at the science funding in the domestic spending in the Senate’s version of the supplemental funding bill.
There’s also an AP story on the Senate’s version.
Unlike the House Supplemental which I posted about yesterday, the Senate bill contains $1.2 billion for science programs From the AIP’s FYI newsletter:
Yesterday afternoon the Senate Appropriations Committee approved its version of a bill to provide $193 billion in additional funding for war-fighting costs and other programs. Under this Supplemental Appropriations Bill, a total of $1.2 billion would be allocated for spending this year by NASA, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, and the National Institutes of Health.
Some numbers, from the FYI newsletter:
The $1.2 billion number is mentioned in this press release (PDF link). The gory details, which I haven’t had a chance to look at yet, are in this summary of the actual bill language (also a PDF), or even more fun reading, the actual amendment text (PDF).
Where this goes, as far as being passed, or having to be negotiated with the House, all in the face of a veto from the White House, is still up in the air for now.
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