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

 

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

During the Week

Government agencies, including NASA, NOAA and DOD, will start implementing the sequester this week.  Washington politicians failed to reach agreement on an alternative to reducing the deficit, so the blunt force “meat-axe” across-the-board spending cuts that were never supposed to happen did happen nonetheless.   For FY2013, the fiscal year that is already underway, NASA and NOAA were cut 5 percent and DOD 7.8 percent, although the effective rates are 9 percent and 13 percent since the cuts must be absorbed in just seven months instead of 12.  

According to a March 1, 2013 Office of Management and Budget report to Congress, NASA will lose $896 million in FY2013 funding compared to its total budget of about $17.8 billion.  We updated our fact sheet on NASA’s FY2013 budget, including adding a table showing how much each of NASA’s budget accounts will be cut.  NOAA will lose $266 million from the two budget accounts that fund its satellite programs.   DOD does not have a “space” budget so understanding the effect on national security space programs is extremely difficult.  Perhaps the Marshall Institute/TechAmerica panel discussion on Thursday will shed some light on that.

Whether the White House and Congress continue discussions on alternates to the sequester this week remains to be seen.   The next critical fiscal deadline is March 27 when the Continuing Resolution that is currently funding the government expires.  It may be that the politicians combine negotiations on the sequester and what to do about funding the rest of FY2013.  Time will tell.

Meanwhile, the House Science, Space and Technology Committee will turn its attention to the threats posed by asteroids (or meteors, once they enter the atmosphere) and comets at a hearing on Wednesday.  That and other events of interest are listed below.

Tuesday, March 5

• NASA Advisory Council (NAC) Education and Outreach Committee, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC., 9:00 am – 5:00 pm ET
• House Appropriations Commerce-Justice-Science subcommittee hearing on Oversight of the Department of Commerce, H-309 Capitol, 10:00 am ET

Wednesday, March 6

•  House SS&T Committee Hearing on Threats from Space: Meteors and Comets, Pt 1, 2318 Rayburn, 2:00 pm ET

Wednesday-Friday, March 6-8

• National Research Council (NRC) Space Science Week, National Academy of Sciences building, 2101 Constitution Ave. NW, Washington DC (NOTE THAT THE MEETINGS ARE NOT AT THE KECK CENTER ON 5TH STREET WHERE SUCH MEETINGS OFTEN TAKE PLACE)

  The NRC’s four space science discipline committees will meet jointly and separately over the course of the three days

  • Committee on Astronomy and Astrophysics
  • Committee on Astrobiology and Planetary Science
  • Committee on Earth Science and Applications from Space
  • Committee on Solar and Space Physics

Thursday, March 7

• Marshall Inst/TechAmerica panel Investing in National Security Space in Time of Austerity,  601 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W. (North Building, enter from Indiana Ave.), Washington, DC, 10:00-11:30 am ET

Friday, March 8

• GWU Space Policy Institute/AIAA meeting Columbia Plus 10: Lessons Learned and Unlearned, GWU Marvin Center, 800 21st St., NW, Washington, DC, 9:00 am – 7:00 pm ET

NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden, Presidential Science Adviser John Holdren and Air Force Space Command Commander Gen. William Shelton will head to Capitol Hill next week to testify about the threat from meteors and comets.

The House Science, Space and Technology Committee has scheduled a hearing on Wednesday, March 6, at 2:00 pm ET, which they call “Part I” of hearings that will review U.S. government efforts to track and mitigate the threat posed by these celestial objects.

Asteroids are rocks in space.   If they enter Earth’s atmosphere, they are called meteors (or fireballs).  Any portions that reach the surface are called meteorites.   A meteor exploded over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk on February 15, injuring more than 1,000 people — mostly from flying glass as windows broke from the shock wave created by the meteor’s interaction with the atmosphere.

UPDATE, February 25:  Confirms the Dennis Tito press conference on Wednesday and adds two NASA science briefings on Wednesday (black holes) and Thursday (Van Allen Probes).

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

During the Week

This is it!  Sequester week.  Unless Congress passes a bill and the President signs it into law before the end of the week, the across-the-board spending cuts known as the sequester will go into effect.  The sequester requires $85 billion in federal spending to be cut by September 30 and though just about everyone agrees it could have long-lasting, damaging effects on the economy, both sides show no sign of compromise.  Each simply continues to blame the other for the mess.

A number of congressional hearings have been and will be held on the impact on various agencies.  We learned ourselves this past week how difficult it is to penetrate the budget fog to accurately report that impact because it is caught up in other budget whirlwinds like how Congress will fund agencies for the last 6 months of FY2013.  Agencies are now operating under a 6-month Continuing Resolution (CR) that expires on March 27.  The betting is that Congress will extend that for the rest of FY2013, passing a “full year CR” that could have even more dramatic consequences for certain government-funded programs. 

One might wonder why Congress and the White House do not at least postpone the sequester until a decision is made on the rest of FY2013 and settle those two matters simultaneously, yet holding this Damoclean sword over the head of the nation’s economy for even one extra day seems unpalatable, too.

Meanwhile, the House Science, Space and Technology’s Space Subcommittee will hold a hearing on Wednesday to discuss the Culberson-Wolf Space Leadership Preservation Act to restructure NASA so that it has a Board of Directors and an administrator with a fixed term.  Reps. Wolf and Culberson will testify, along with Tom Young and Elliot Pulham.   The bill was introduced in the last Congress and is expected to be reintroduced soon.

Here is a list of all the space-policy related events we know about so far.

Monday, February 25

• AIA:  Forecasting the Next Super Storm, U.S. Capitol Visitor Center Room SVC-201-00, 9:00 am ET

Tuesday, February 26

• NASA Advisory Council (NAC) Unmanned Aircraft Systems Subcommittee, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC, 8:30 am – 4:30 pm ET
• House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee Hearing on DOD Fiscal Challenges, 2359 Rayburn, 10:00 am ET

Wednesday, February 27

• House SS&T Space Subcommittee Hearing on Space Leadership Preservation Act, 2318 Rayburn, 10:00 am ET
• NASA Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group (MEPAG), telecon, 11:00 am – 3:00 pm ET (8:00 am – noon PT)
• Dennis Tito Mars Mission Announcement, National Press Club, 1:00 pm ET
• NASA media telecon on black holes, virtual, 1:00 pm ET

Thursday, February 28

•  NASA news conference on Van Allen Probes results, APL, Laurel, MD, 2:00 pm ET

Thursday-Friday, February 28 – March 1

• NAC Aeronautics Committee, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC

Friday, March 1

• NAC Commercial Space Committee, Embassy Suites-Denver Tech Center, Centennial, CO, 8:00 – 11:30 am MT (10:00 am – 1:30 pm ET)
• Interagency Astronomy and Astrophysics Advisory Committee (AAAC), telecon, 12:00 – 3:00 pm ET

 

Since the beginning of the Obama Administration, the national security space community has described today’s space environment as “congested, contested, and competitive.” Yet as panelists at an event Wednesday emphasized, the threats to U.S. space investments not only have security implications, but may impact the bottom line of companies and even the ability to continue relying on critical space-enabled services.

Organized by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Secure World Foundation (SWF) and the Space Foundation, the event brought together experts from the national space security, academic, commercial and government sectors to discuss some of these threats. The event was held under the Chatham House rule, where everything is said on a non-attribution basis.

Panelists explained that the changed space environment, which now involves more than 60 space actors, challenges the rules, practices and expectations that were established more than 50 years ago when space was the sole domain of the Soviet Union and the United States. This situation forces changes in how governments and commercial actors interact and how they protect the systems on which they are becoming increasingly reliant.

Some of the key threats identified by the panel include the following:

• Growing space dependence – Critical services such as weather monitoring, telecommunications, and positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) – such as the Global Positioning System (GPS) — would not be possible without space assets.  According to one of the panelists, there is a prevailing trend for the design of essential utilities that are heavily dependent on space assets, such as location-based utilities using GPS.  Heavy reliance on space-based assets is problematic to the extent that they often have no terrestrial backups, which would be costly, have no other market, and may become outdated before they are used.
• Inadequate treaty-regime – The existing treaty regime, shaped by the interactions between the Soviet Union and the United States in the 1960s, may no longer be effective to guide space activities. According to a panelist, the need to incorporate and involve commercial companies and the need for an effective dispute resolution system are two issues that need to be addressed.  The panelist added that “a lot of thought and perhaps innovations,” will be needed to “tweak the legal regime to accommodate [new] trends.”
• Combined Space Operations – One panelist said that when it comes to addressing challenges faced by military space activities, proposed solutions that cost a lot of money are “dead on arrival.” The community is instead shifting towards increased international cooperation. The Department of Defense is actively working to cooperate with its closest allies in areas such as space situational awareness (SSA) and exploring how to move towards combined space operations. While this is challenging, the panelist expressed confidence that steps were being taken in the right direction, saying “I’m kind of excited.”
• Long-term Sustainability – As one of the agencies directed to promote the stability and long-term sustainability of space by the 2010 National Space Policy, the Department of State engages in a variety of bilateral and multilateral activities.  A panelist explained that an ongoing push to raise the significance of this issue in the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (UNCOPUOS) led to a study, likely to conclude this year, that would lead to “voluntary, non-binding, best practices guidelines” to promote long-term sustainability.
• Industrial base issues – Threats to the sustainability of the satellite manufacturing industrial base were cited as a concern for both the commercial and military space communities. Nevertheless, export control reform has been taken as a positive step. One of the panelists thanked Congress for taking a step that was “a significant assist to U.S. manufacturing.”
• In-space operations – Improved SSA has been a topic of interest for everyone from U.S. government civil and military officials negotiating data sharing agreements to commercial companies self organizing in ventures such as the Space Data Association. Beyond the need to avoid in-orbit collisions, reducing radio frequency and electromagnetic interference is also a concern.  

At a press conference today, the President of the Association of American Universities, Hunter Rawlings, called the sequester “stupid” and “shortsighted.”  The press conference brought the aerospace and defense industry together with groups representing health funding and research universities to raise more warning flags about the across-the-board federal spending cuts known as the sequester, which will go into effect 18 days from now unless Congress acts to postpone or replace it.

As we reported yesterday, this could be called “sequestration week” in Washington with just about everyone’s attention focused on what will happen if those dire federal spending cuts go into effect on March 1 as dictated under existing law. Congress will be in recess next week, and will return with only four days left before that deadline, making this week prime time for affected groups to make their case.

Congress postponed the sequester from January 2 to March 1 as part of the year-end fiscal cliff debate.  It can be postponed indefinitely if all parties agree.  It was included in the 2011 Budget Control Act as a “poison pill” whose impact would be so catastrophic that politicians would be forced to find another way to reduce the deficit rather than let it happen.   That strategy has failed so far.

The White House issued a fact sheet on Friday that clarifies the percentages by which discretionary budgets will have to be reduced as part of the effort to rein in the deficit. The federal budget is divided into discretionary and mandatory spending.  Mandatory spending means money for entitlement programs (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid etc) and paying interest on the national debt, for example.  Discretionary spending is everything else, broken down into two categories — defense and non-defense. “Defense” is actually more broadly defined as “security” spending and includes not only the Department of Defense, but nuclear weapons activities of the Department of Energy, the Intelligence Community, homeland security and similar programs.  Non-defense includes NASA, NOAA, and most other government agencies with which the public is familiar.  

Earlier guidance from the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) was that defense accounts would be cut 9.4 percent and non-defense accounts by 8.2 percent. OMB’s most recent calculations are that defense cuts will be about 8 percent and non-defense about 5 percent. However, for the current fiscal year, FY2013, it will be an effective cut of 13 percent for defense and 9 percent for non-defense since the fiscal year already is underway and cuts must be absorbed in 7 months instead of 12.   A total of $85 billion would be cut from FY2013 discretionary spending.  The cuts are “across-the-board” meaning that each budget account is cut by the same percentage.  Agencies do not have the opportunity to prioritize which programs are more important than others.

The Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) has been leading a relentless campaign to inform the public and policymakers about the dire consequences of such cuts on aerospace and defense companies. While AIA talks about cuts to both defense and non-defense spending, the focus of concern by that group and others, and many House Republicans, to date has been the potential cuts to defense. Considerably less attention has been paid to NASA, NOAA, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the multitude of other non-defense discretionary agencies.

This morning, however, AIA teamed with groups that are working together through NDD United (Non-Defense Discretionary United) at a press conference to underscore the effects not only of sequestration, but of the likelihood of a year-long Continuing Resolution (CR), on all discretionary spending.

The government is currently funded under a CR that will expire on March 27.  It holds agencies to their FY2012 funding levels and today’s betting is that instead of dealing with the FY2013 budget request President Obama submitted to Congress a year ago, Congress will simply extend the CR for the rest of FY2013.  That will render moot the President’s FY2013 request to reprioritize some programs and initiate new ones, as well as holding spending to the FY2012 levels.  (Meanwhile, some in Congress are criticizing the President for being late with his FY2014 budget request, which should have been submitted on February 4.   Since Congress has yet to act on the FY2013 budget request, it is a curious complaint.  The White House is having understandable difficulty determining what to request not knowing the fate of the FY2013 request or the sequester and has not told Congress when the FY2014 request will be sent forward.  Defense News reports today that the Department of Defense has a tentative date of March 25 for sending its request to Congress.)

AIA President and CEO Marion Blakey stressed that federal budget cuts already have resulted in layoffs at many of AIA’s defense and aerospace companies. The 10-year defense budget was cut $487 billion by the 2011 Budget Control Act, she reminded everyone, causing “immediate and serious drags on the economy” that are part of the reason for the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) falling into negative territory for the first time in four years. If sequestration goes into effect on top of those cuts, the impact on the nation’s economy will be serious. “There is remarkable unanimity that sequestration is terrible policy. It will result in a hollow force for our military and force our economy back into recession,” she argued.

Hunter Rawlings, President of the Association of American Universities (AAU), was much more blunt saying the sequester “is stupid, it is shortsighted, and should not happen.”  AAU represents 60 leading U.S. research universities. Peter McPherson, President of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) — a group of 200 public research universities — said sequestration is a “reckless and blunt tool” that would mean $10 billion less in government support for research and development (R&D) in FY2013 alone, and $90 billion through FY2021.  Noting that other countries, like China, are increasing not decreasing R&D spending, he called sequestration “penny wise and pound foolish” and a threat to American innovation.

The group as a whole agreed that the deficit needs to be reduced, but did not offer a solution.  Instead, their message is that discretionary spending should not have to foot the bill by itself.  Cuts to all federal spending, discretionary and mandatory, as well as revenue increases, must be considered, they agreed.  AIA Chairman and Northrop Grumman CEO and President Wes Bush said that the aerospace and defense industry has “long called for a balanced approach. … We know you can’t just pull one lever. You have to reach and pull all the levers available to our nation to deal with this. Unfortunately, what we’ve seen today is primarily … a pulling of the lever on discretionary budgets [but] … everything has to be on the table to make sure we make good decisions about the future of our country.”

AIA and NDD United each sent letters to Congress today signed by their member organizations.  The letters and other information are posted on the Second To None website.

Meanwhile, Air Force Space Command (AFSC) Commander Gen. William Shelton spelled out the effects the sequester would have on Air Force space programs.  As reported in today’s SatNews, a memo from AFSC to the Air Force Deputy Assistant Secretary for Budget listed the following actions that would be forced by the sequester: 

• reduce some missile warning and space surveillance 24/7 operations to 8/7
• reduce by 75 percent sustaining an older communications satellite constellation
• suspend Air Force-wide engineering and installation work that includes a SATCOM facility
• terminate Global Combat Support System-hosted applications including Nuclear Weapons Material Tracking Capability and Explosive Ordinance Disposal Management System
• prioritize and curtail and/or cancel operational training exercises and international partner exercises
• reduce Professional Military Education and Mission Readiness Training quotas

Four congressional hearings are planned this week to look at various aspects of the impact of the sequester and/or a full-year CR.  See our “Space Policy Events of Interest: February 11-15, 2013” article for details.