Congress Returns to Changed Political Landscape, But Same To-Do List

President-elect Trump’s decisive win on Tuesday and Republican advances in the Senate will usher in a changed political landscape next year. Which party will control the House is still up in the air, though Republicans seem likely to keep that chamber, cementing all three levers of power. But that’s next year. There’s still the rest of this Congress to go. On Tuesday, Congress returns to work with the same to-do list they had in September — passing FY2025 appropriations and other critical pieces of legislation.

Republicans will control the White House and the Senate next year for sure.  They’ve won 53 seats in the Senate so far with one contest (Arizona) still undecided. (UPDATE: Democrat Ruben Gallego won the Arizona race.)

Republicans lead in the House with 212 members versus 202 Democrats. Of the 21 races still to be determined, Republicans only need to win six to hold the majority, while Democrats would have to get 16.

One of those is California’s 27th district where George Whitesides (D) is running against incumbent Mike Garcia (R). The district includes Palmdale and is close to Edwards Air Force Base and Mojave Air and Space Port to the north and Pasadena and JPL to the south.

At this moment, Whitesides is slightly ahead 50.4 percent to 49.6 percent.

Garcia serves both on NASA’s authorization committee (House Science, Space and Technology) and appropriations subcommittee (Commerce-Justice-Science). Though a fiscal conservative, he’s been a vocal supporter for the Mars Sample Return mission saying “it probably is one of the only times I’ve agreed with Schiff.” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) currently represents the 30th district and was just elected as California’s new Senator.

This is Whitesides’s first political race, but he’s a well known space activist and executive who served as head of the National Space Society, as NASA Chief of Staff under Charlie Bolden, and as CEO of Virgin Galactic. He stepped down from that role in March 2021 in order to run for Congress.

(UPDATE: Whitesides won. Garcia conceded late on November 11.)

However those final races turn out, the new Congress doesn’t start until January 3, 2025.  For now, Democrats still control the Senate and the White House and will try to get through as many of their priorities as possible, though with a Republican House that will continue to be a challenge.

From a space perspective the two most important tasks for the rest of this year are passing appropriations bills and the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

However rancorous the partisan politics, Congress has managed to pass an NDAA every year since the first in 1961. Expectations are high they will do so again this year. The only real question is what other legislation will be tacked onto it as the 118th Congress comes to a close and big changes loom.

The Senate Armed Services Committee’s version of the NDAA already includes extensions of the FAA “learning period” that prohibits new commercial human spaceflight regulations and third party indemnification to January and September 2028 respectively. That’s a three-year extension in both cases.

Among other space-related legislation that could — emphasis on could — be added are a NASA authorization bill and a commercial space/mission authorization bill. The House passed a NASA authorization bill (H.R. 8958) in September. The House Science, Space, and Technology Committee cleared a commercial space bill almost exactly one year ago, though on a partisan basis. The Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation committee hasn’t acted on either yet. It’s not uncommon for agreement to be reached in the closing days of a Congress, but getting individual pieces of legislation through at the last minute is iffy at best. If both parties and both chambers agree, the NDAA may be an expeditious solution.

A topic that hasn’t gotten much public attention is that the exemption Congress gave NASA from the Iran-North Korea-Syria Nonproliferation Act (INKSNA) that allows it to work with Russia on the International Space Station program expires in December 2025. The ISS and INKSNA (originally the Iran Nonproliferation Act) have been entwined since 2000.

While that’s more than a year away, knowing how long it takes for congressional action and the importance of ensuring uninterrupted cooperation on the interdependent facility, it might not be too early to deal with that issue now. NASA recently confirmed to SpacePolicyOnline.com that another INKSNA exemption is needed “for NASA to maintain and operate the International Space Station safely” and “a new agreement is currently in work.” It was last extended in 2019, buried in an unrelated appropriations bill when it wasn’t clear if the 2019 NASA Authorization bill would pass. Indeed, it didn’t. The NASA bill would have extended the waiver to 2030, but the provision in the FY2020 Transportation-HUD appropriations bill only goes to December 31, 2025.

As for appropriations, none of the FY2025 bills have cleared Congress yet. The government is operating under a Continuing Resolution (CR) that expires on December 20. Whether they finish by then or punt into 2025 is an open question.

Ongoing debate pits those who want to get it done this year so agencies don’t remain in limbo about their FY2025 spending levels and the new Congress doesn’t have to start off with funding fights, versus those who want the new Congress and Trump Administration to have more power over the outcome. They had this debate in September and the “we need to do it now” forces won, with a lot of Republicans on the defense committees pointing out the negative impact of CRs on the military in particular.

If Republicans keep the House and know that all three levers of power will be in the their hands next year, they may be less willing to compromise on FY2025 appropriations. However, not all Republicans have been on the same page so far. Enough House Republicans opposed some of the bills that came out of the House Appropriations Committee to prevent their passage and many Senate Republicans have distanced themselves from their House counterparts both on the level of funding cuts and the inclusion of social policy provisions that are anathema to Democrats. Whether that changes now remains to be seen.

How the space program will fare under the second Trump Administration is impossible to know for many reasons including whether the ultra-conservative wing of the party continues to demand deep cuts to federal spending to rein in the debt. While there was a lot of talk over the past many months about cutting spending, with Trump announcing he’ll put SpaceX’s Elon Musk in charge of a “government efficiency commission” and Musk proclaiming he’ll cut $2 trillion of the $6.5 trillion budget, campaign rhetoric is not always a useful indicator of what actually happens.  NASA is already straining under the cuts imposed by last year’s Fiscal Responsibility Act, so the degree to which debt reduction is a key  goal next year could have significant impacts on the agency.

Whatever the 119th Congress may bring in January, Congress and the Biden Administration still have a lot of work to do before the 118th Congress ends.