• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Congress Cuts Funds to Bush's Space Plan

Posted on: Wednesday, 21 July 2004, 06:00 CDT

Jul. 21--WASHINGTON -- While NASA celebrated the 35th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing on Tuesday, a House appropriations panel slashed funding for President Bush's proposal to launch explorers back to the lunar surface and on to Mars.

The measures taken by the House subcommittee that funds space, veterans, housing and the environment cut $1.1 billion from the $16.2 billion budget NASA requested for 2005.

The casualties included funding to kick off the development of an Apollo-like spacecraft that would carry astronauts back to the moon and a nuclear propulsion source for a Jupiter probe that could adapt for explorers launched on deep space missions.

The full House Appropriations Committee is expected to take up the funding bill on Thursday.

But the bipartisan vote by appropriators suggests that Bush's space vision is more than the amount of money available under spending limits for various agencies agreed to by House leaders.

However, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, the Sugar Land Republican whose district includes NASA's Johnson Space Center, called the cuts "unacceptable," then warned: "It would be very hard to get this bill to the floor if it's unacceptable to me."

DeLay, the second-highest-ranking House Republican, schedules measures for floor consideration and wields considerable power over spending bills.

Though exploration funding was cut, the panel maintained the $4.3 billion NASA sought for the space shuttle, which has been grounded since last year's Columbia accident. The panel also supported full funding for unmanned Mars programs at the requested level of $691 million.

"It's a fair bill," said subcommittee Chairman James Walsh, R-N.Y. He noted that, except for veterans' health care, all other agencies under his panel's jurisdiction were cut by 2 percent from the current spending level. NASA's cut was limited to 1.5 percent.

"We tried to respond to the president's priorities and members' priorities," Walsh said. "There was no bias. We could not accommodate them all."

The House GOP leadership had ordered the subcommittee to add $1.2 billion for veterans' health care. That item was included in the House's budget resolution. Even though the House and Senate never agreed on a final budget, the House decided to use its own version as a guide for setting spending limits for various programs.

The increased funding for veterans' health care, combined with decreased revenues in housing and other programs, forced the committee to find $3.7 billion through spending cuts, Walsh explained.

"Given the allocations we have, the cuts will be felt equally by all," Walsh said.

NASA took Tuesday's developments in stride, releasing a statement that characterized the proposed cuts as "an early step" in a lengthy budget process that won't likely play out until after the November elections.

In the meantime, the Senate will likely produce a version of the bill that would be more generous to NASA.

Veterans of the historic July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 mission gathered at NASA facilities across the nation Tuesday, including Johnson Space Center in Houston. Many rallied behind the strategy unveiled by Bush on Jan. 14 to revive the exploration of deep space, starting with trips back to the moon between 2015 and 2020.

Trips to the moon would serve as training exercises for future missions to Mars, the asteroids and eventually the far reaches of the solar system. But the plan is contingent on a new human spacecraft called Project Constellation.

The subcommittee's actions cut all funds proposed for 2005, jeopardizing efforts to begin unmanned trials of the new spacecraft by 2008.

The first journey out of Earth's orbit was planned by 2014. In all, the space agency plans to invest $6.6 billion into Project Constellation over the next five years.

A second key casualty of the subcommittee's actions was a $230 million cut to Project Prometheus, an effort to develop a nuclear reactor propulsion source for an unmanned spacecraft called the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter.

Slated for a 2012 liftoff, the Jupiter orbiter would explore moons believed to harbor conditions possibly suitable for some form of life.

By Gebe Martinez and Mark Carreau. Mark Carreau reported from Houston.

PROPOSED CUTS

A House appropriations subcommittee approved only $15.1 billion in spending for NASA in 2005. The spending bill is:

--$1.1 billion less than what President Bush requested.

--$229 million less than the space agency's current budget.

-----

To see more of the Houston Chronicle, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.HoustonChronicle.com

(c) 2004, Houston Chronicle. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News. For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.

More News in this Category