The following events may be of interest in the coming week.  The House and Senate are in session.

During the Week

The House and Senate are hoping to complete action on the FY2013 Continuing Resolution (CR) by Friday when both chambers are scheduled to begin a two week Easter/Passover recess.  They each also hope to pass their respective FY2014 budget resolutions.  (For an explanation of the difference between the CR and the budget resolutions, see the article we published Friday.)  Congress has until March 27 to pass something to keep the government operating — that is when the current CR expires.  If they do not pass a new one, they could pass a short-term extension of the current law.

This is a very busy week for the space community as a whole, with two major conferences in Washington, DC (Satellite 2013 and the AAS Goddard Memorial Symposium) and one in Houston (LPSC 2013).   There are four hearings of particular interest:  the House SS&T Committee’s rescheduled hearing on the threat posed by meteors and comets on Tuesday; the Senate Commerce subcommittee’s hearing on “threats from space” that apparently includes not just meteors and comets, but judging from the witness list, space debris and perhaps others threats on Wednesday; and the House Appropriations Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) subcommittee hearing on Wednesday afternoon with NASA Administrator Bolden and a separate CJS hearing on Thursday with “outside witnesses” who may talk about space issues among the broad array of other topics under the subcommittee’s jurisdiction.

Monday-Thursday, March 18-21

• Satellite 2013, Walter E. Washington Convention Center, Washington, DC
  • Monday is a series of pre-conference meetings, the conference itself is March 19-21

Monday-Friday, March 18-22

• Lunar and Planetary Science Conference 2013 (LPSC 2013), The Woodlands, TX (near Houston)

Tuesday, March 19

• House SS&T Committee hearing on Threats from Space:  Meteors and Comets, 2318 Rayburn, 10:00 am ET
• Marshall Inst/Heritage Foundation Commemoration of 30th Ann of Strategic Defense Initiative, 214 Massachusetts Ave., S.E., Washington, 10:00 am – 1:00 pm ET
• NASA News Conference on Upcoming ISS Mission, NASA Johnson Space Center, 1:00 pm CT (2:00 pm ET), watch on NASA TV

Tuesday-Thursday, March 19-21

• AAS Goddard Memorial Symposium Greenbelt, MD

Wednesday, March 20

• Senate Commerce Sbcmte Hrg on Space Threats, 253 Russell, 10:00 am ET
• House Appropriations CJS Sbmcte Hearing on NASA with Charlie Bolden, 2359 Rayburn, 2:00 pm ET
• Women in Aerospace Women’s History Month Reception with Astronaut Suni Williams, 116 Dirksen, 5:00-7:00 pm ET

Thursday, March 21

• House Appropriations CJS Sbcmte Hearing with Outside Witnesses, H-309 Capitol, 9:30 am ET
• NASA News Conf on Results from Planck Spacecraft re Cosmology, NASA HQ, Washington, DC, 11:00 am ET

Friday, March 22

• National Space Club Goddard Dinner, Hilton Washington Hotel, 1919 Connecticut Ave., NW, Washington, DC, 6:30 pm ET

 

 

As the week draws to a close, here is a status check on where Capitol Hill stands on the FY2013 Continuing Resolution (CR) and FY2014 budget resolutions.

The House passed its version of the CR (H.R. 933) on March 6, but it hit a snag in the Senate yesterday.   The bipartisan sponsors of the Senate version of the bill, Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) and Richard Shelby (R-AL), along with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) were optimistic that the Senate would complete action on the bill this week and send it back to the House.   Congress is hoping to clear the new CR by next Friday, March 22, when both chambers are scheduled to begin a two-week Easter break.

The current CR expires on March 27 so something must be enacted before then to avoid a government shutdown. 

The Senate began debate on the CR on Wednesday, a day later than planned after Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Tom Coburn (R-OK) complained they had insufficient time to read it, the bill having been introduced only the night before.  Then came a flurry of over 100 proposed amendments.  After spending most of the day debating the first few, Reid sent the Senate home last night to give Mikulski and Shelby a long weekend to sort through the remaining 99 amendments and determine which would be offered on the floor.  Debate is scheduled to resume on Monday.  Reid said he was disappointed in both Republican and Democratic Senators for offering too many amendments.

House Speaker Boehner reportedly is amenable to the changes made in the Senate version, at least so far.   If that remains true, there is still a chance it could pass by March 22.

The CR would fund the government for the rest of FY2013 — until September 30.  The House-passed and Senate-introduced versions contain mixed news for NASA and NOAA.

Separately, the House and Senate Budget Committees released details of their budget resolutions for FY2014 and beyond this week.  The two are completely different.  The House version, crafted by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), proposes stiff spending cuts to eliminate the deficit in 10 years, the period of time covered by the bill.  It was approved by the House Budget Committee on Wednesday on a party line vote.   The Senate version, developed by Senate Budget Committee Chairman Patty Murray (D-WA), proposes a combination of tax increases and spending cuts, repeals the sequester, and does not eliminate the deficit during the 10-year period.  The Senate Budget Committee approved it Thursday, also on a party line vote.

Word came today in The Hill newspaper that a third proposal is in the works in the House.  The conservative House Republican Conference under the leadership of Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) reportedly is planning to introduce an alternative to the Ryan proposal that would eliminate the deficit in only four years instead of 10, also through spending cuts alone.  A significant portion of the cuts in both the Ryan and Scalise proposals would come from reforming Medicare.

Both the House and Senate plan to bring their respective budget resolutions to the floor for debate next week.  In theory, each side passes a budget resolution and the two then work together to reach a compromise on a single, final bill.   That has not happened in many years, and is not likely to this year, either, considering the different underlying philosophies at the heart of each proposal.

Meanwhile, President Obama still has not submitted his budget request for FY2014, nor announced when it will be submitted.  The most recent rumor is that April 8 is when DOD’s budget, at least, will be sent to Congress, but the White House has not confirmed it.

Senate Democrats today officially unveiled their FY2014 budget plan, which is vastly different from the House Republican plan introduced yesterday.

The names of the two plans hint at their differences.   The House plan is entitled “The Path to Prosperity:  A Responsible, Balanced Budget” while the Senate’s is “Foundation for Growth:  Restoring the Promise of Opportunity.”

Politico wryly commented that the two budget plans “aren’t even apples and oranges.  They’re more like apples and bicycles.”  The documents “have no chance of becoming law, but they do help explain the impasse over spending and debt in Washington,” it adds.

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) posted a video on the committee’s website emphasizing the differences between her approach and that of her House counterpart, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI).   The lines of demarcation are all too familiar.  The House wants to balance the budget only by cutting spending.  The Senate wants to balance the budget both by cutting spending and raising revenue.  More fundamentally they reflect a philosophical clash over the role of the federal government in the economy and in personal lives.

The Senate Budget Committee is holding hearings this afternoon and will continue tomorrow.  The expectation is that the budget resolution will go to the Senate floor next week.   As House Republicans continually remind the public, the Senate has not passed a budget resolution since 2009.  Time will tell if Murray is more successful this year with a slightly larger number of Democratic votes, but still not the 60 needed to break a filibuster.  There are 53 Democrats, 2 Independents who usually vote with Democrats, and 45 Republicans in the Senate this Congress.

For his part, President Obama reportedly told House Republicans today that his priority is to avoid an economic slow down, not to balance the budget.  The President is making several trips to Capitol Hill this week to meet with Representatives and Senators on their own turf to talk about resolving the nation’s economic problems.

The budget resolutions deal with the future — FY2014 and beyond.    Congress is simultaneously dealing with funding the government for the rest of this fiscal year, FY2013.    The government is currently operating under a law that expires on March 27 and the House and Senate are scheduled to begin their Easter break on March 22, so that effort is on a faster track.

President Obama may be late in sending his FY2014 budget request to Congress, but Congress is continuing to work both on FY2013 and FY2014 budget matters.

Late last night, Senators Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) and Richard Shelby (R-AL), chairwoman and vice chairman, respectively, of the Senate Appropriations Committee, introduced the Senate version of the FY2013 Continuing Resolution (CR).   The House passed its version last week.  That legislation is for the remaining months of FY2013, which began last October.   SpacePolicyOnline.com will publish an article summarizing the Senate CR later.  Sorting out the numbers is no easy task and what looks like good news for NASA and NOAA at first glance isn’t quite so good after reading the fine print.  The fact that the bill is bipartisan makes its chances for clearing the Senate better than usual, but whether the House will agree is another matter.

That’s all about the current fiscal year.  Today, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), chairman of the House Budget Committee, offered the opening round in negotiations over the FY2014 budget and beyond by introducing the House version of the FY2014 budget resolution. 

Budget resolutions make top-level funding recommendations not on an agency-by-agency basis, but by separating government spending into about 20 “budget functions.”   Most of NASA’s funding, for example, is in function 250 (general science, space, and technology), except for its aeronautics budget which is in function 400 (transportation).   It is not possible to say what effect the budget resolution would have on NASA or other agencies other than in broad terms.   Since Paul’s new budget resolution proposes cutting spending over the next 10 years such that the nation’s budget will be balanced at the end of that decade — instead of balancing it over 25 years as proposed last year (see an analysis in The Hill newspaper) — one can imagine that space spending would be subject to further reductions.   The Senate Budget Committee is expected to release its version of the FY2014 budget resolution later this week.

Meanwhile, although Congress is still waiting for President Obama to submit his FY2014 budget request, some committees are proceeding with hearings anyway.  The House Appropriations Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) subcommittee announced today that it will hold a hearing with NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden next week. 

Late last night Senators Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) and Richard Shelby (R-AL) introduced a bipartisan FY2013 Continuing Resolution (CR) as a replacement for the version that passed the House last week.   The two are chairwoman and vice chairman, respectively, of the Senate Appropriations Committee.  The fact that it is a bipartisan bill increases the chances it might pass the Senate — though that is far from assured. 

The bill is different from the House-passed version in that it incorporates three more of the 12 regular appropriations bills and at first glance the total amount appropriated looks very different.  A Senate Appropriations Committee press release states that the total budget authority in the bill is $1.043 trillion “consistent with the Budget Control Act of 2011.”   By contrast, the House-passed CR adopted a sequester-adjusted total of $984 billion.

A careful reading of the Senate bill, however, suggests that it also provides only $984 billion.   Section 3002 of the bill “affirms that nothing in the bill changes current law with respect to sequestration” as the committee’s explanatory statement clarifies.  The Senate bill also imposes across-the-board rescissons to some of the agencies in the bill, including NASA and NOAA.  

In the House-passed CR (H.R. 933), agencies covered by two of the 12 regular appropriations bills — Defense, and Military Construction/Veterans Affairs — would get new FY2013 bills instead of being constrained by their FY2012 laws.  The Senate CR would add agencies in three more of the regular appropriations bills:  Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS), which includes NASA and NOAA; Agriculture; and Homeland Security. 

At first glance, NASA and NOAA both appear to do relatively well in the Senate CR, but there are adjustments elsewhere in the bill that make it difficult to state with any certainty what the numbers are.  This is our understanding, at this point in time, subject to clarification if needed.

For example, NASA would be provided with a total FY2013 appropriation level of $17.862 billion according to the numbers in the bill itself as well as page 54 of the explanatory statement and an accompanying table with a detailed breakdown.   However, the committee’s press release says the total is $17.5 billion, probably because a provision at the end of the bill (section 3001) subjects everything in the CJS portion to a 1.877 percent across-the-board rescission.   That would lower NASA’s budget to $17.527 billion, which rounds down to $17.5 billion for press release purposes.  That is without the sequester, however, which is nominally 5 percent, which would leave NASA with $16.651 billion for FY2013. 

For comparison, the House-passed CR appears to hold NASA to its $17.8 billion appropriated level, minus the 5 percent sequester, and then imposes a 0.098 percent rescission, leaving NASA with about $16.894 billion.  In terms of dollars, NASA fares better in the House bill, but the Senate bill provides somewhat greater flexibility in spending whatever the agency gets.

As for NOAA, perhaps the best news in the Senate CR is that Mikulski withdraws her recommendation that all of NOAA’s satellite programs be transferred to NASA.  She made that recommendation in her subcommittee report on the CJS bill last year.  The report accompanying the CR does still recommend, however, that NOAA “consider” transferring one of those programs, Jason-3, to NASA.  Mikulski criticized NOAA last year for increasing the life cycle cost estimate for the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) from $11.9 billion to $12.9 billion.  In the report accompanying the CR, NOAA is instructed to submit to Congress documentation that “reflects” the $11.9 billion life cycle cost.  The report has several other provisions that make it clear the appropriations committee is not yet convinced NOAA is effectively managing its satellite programs.

NOAA’s total funding for satellite procurement for FY2013 would be $1.8 billion in the CR, a $117 million increase over FY2012 and about the same as the FY2013 request.  NOAA needs the increase in FY2013 to begin procurement of launch vehicles for its new Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES-R) series.  However, subtract the 5 percent sequester and the 1.877 percent across-the-board rescission and that figure is reduced by $123 million.

Again, these figures are preliminary not only because the CR has only been introduced, not passed, but also because these multi-hundred page bills may contain exceptions, nuances and adjustments that we missed.  Or more may be added as the process plays out.  But at the moment, this is our understanding of what the Senate CR would mean for the two agencies.

The following events may be of interest in the week ahead.  The House and Senate both are in session.

During the Week

Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, is expected to introduce the Senate Democrats’ version of the FY2013 Continuing Resolution (CR) on Monday, with floor consideration possible as early as Wednesday.   Rumors of what will be in the bill are just that, rumors, and these have short lifetimes, but for what it is worth, the most recent betting seemed to be that she would try to incorporate three more of the 12 regular appropriations bills into the CR.  The House-passed CR, which would fund the government for the rest of FY2013 (through September 30), included two of the 12 regular appropriations bills — defense and military construction/veterans affairs. The Mikulski bill is rumored to add these three: Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS, which includes NASA and NOAA); Agriculture; and Homeland Security.  The goal does not seem to give the additional agencies more money — it’s said the total amount of funding in her bill is the same as what passed the House last week, $984 billion, the sequester-adjusted total for FY2013 — but to give them more flexiblity in how to spend it. That is the big complaint about the sequester, not that it cuts too much money (though there certainly are people who would argue that), but that it does not allow cuts to specific activities.  It cuts every activity by roughly the same amount regardless of priority or merit.

Meanwhile, the House and Senate Budget Committees also are expected to reveal their separate budget resolutions for FY2014 and beyond.  The Obama Administration still has not sent its budget request for FY2014 to Capitol Hill, nor publicly stated when it will do so.  The latest rumor there is that the DOD request, at least, will not be submitted until April 8.  Usually, the entire budget request for all departments and agencies is submitted at the same time, but there is no way to tell at this point if that will be true this year.  Meanwhile, President Obama is scheduled to visit Capitol Hill on Wednesday and Thursday to talk with Representatives and Senators on their own turf about a long term budget strategy to avoid the crisis-dominated pattern of recent years.

Monday, March 11

• Rescheduled from last week:   Marshall Institute Panel on Investing in National Security Space in a Time of Austerity, 601 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., North Building (enter from Indiana Ave.), Suite 600, Washington, DC, 9:00-10:30 am ET

Tuesday, March 12

• SASC Hrg on Strategic Command and Cyber Command, G-50 Dirksen, 9:30 am ET
• NASA News Conference on Mars Curiosity, NASA HQ, Washington, DC, 1:00 pm ET
• ISU-DC Space Cafe Featuring Marcia Smith, SpacePolicyOnline.com, Science Club, 1136 19th St., NW, Washington, DC., 7:00 pm ET

Wednesday, March 13

• House Appropriations CJS Sbcmte Hearing on Oversight of NASA, H-309 Capitol, 11:00 am ET

Thursday, March 14

• Three ISS Crew Members Return to Earth on Soyuz TMA-06M, undocking 8:30 pm ET, landing 11:57 pm ET (March 15 at the landing site in Kazakhstan), watch on NASA TV