Nelson Confirms Funding for Deorbit Tug in Supplemental as Appropriations Drama Continues With Shutdown Looming

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson confirms that President Biden is requesting initial funding for the ISS Deorbit Vehicle in a recent supplemental funding request. NASA’s safety advisory panel is adamant the vehicle must not be delayed. When Congress will get around to dealing with supplementals is a huge question since it is struggling just to pass another Continuing Resolution by Friday to keep the government open. New House Speaker Mike Johnson released his proposal today — a “laddered” CR extending funding for some agencies through January and others through February — a novel approach certain to face opposition.  Johnson got a taste of the challenges ahead last week when he had to pull two appropriations bills from the floor when he couldn’t garner enough support from his own party. Nonetheless, he plans to bring up the FY2024 bill that funds NASA and NOAA this week.

The Damoclean sword of a pending government shutdown is all too familiar to anyone who follows Washington politics. Congress often cannot get agreement on a CR until the 11th hour, leaving government workers biting their nails and the nation exasperated by inside-the-Beltway dysfunction. More often than not, a last minute deal is made, but not always.

This week’s situation is especially uncertain because Johnson is a relatively unknown and untested Speaker of the House who is only in the job today because of how his predecessor handled this very issue.

Kevin McCarthy was ousted by his Republican colleagues three days after passing the current CR because he worked with Democrats to find a solution. Although 210 Republicans wanted him to remain as Speaker, eight members of the ultra conservative House Freedom Caucus didn’t and since all the Democrats voted for their leader, Hakeem Jeffries, that was enough for McCarthy to lose.

There are 221 Republicans and 212 Democrats in the House, so if Democrats are united in opposition, a Speaker can only afford to lose four votes from his own party on any legislation.

After three grueling weeks of Republican in-fighting during which the House could not conduct any legislative business, Johnson emerged as the new Speaker. He was not part of House leadership in the past, so is at the bottom of the learning curve of how to run the House and keep his own sharply-divided Republican colleagues in line.

That’s the appropriations quagmire he finds himself in right now, juggling the CR, the regular FY2024 appropriations bills, and two supplementals.

First and foremost, Congress needs to get another CR passed by midnight Friday.

This afternoon (Saturday), Johnson released his laddered proposal. Most agencies would have their current funding extended to February 2, 2024, but those funded by four of the bills — Agriculture, Energy-Water, MilCon-VA, and Transportation-HUD — would only get until January 19. Even if he is able to get enough votes to pass it in the House, Senate Appropriations Committee chair Patty Murray (D-WA) reportedly called it the “craziest, stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of.”

Senate Democrats and Republicans want a short-term “clean” CR through mid-December to try and force everyone to finish all the bills before the Christmas holidays. The Fiscal Responsibility Act says that if all 12 bills are not enacted by the end of the year, all agencies will get a one percent cut from their FY2023 levels. If Johnson’s laddered plan prevails, pushing the new CR into 2024, it will be important to watch whether they change that provision.

The House and Senate are working on the regular bills, but it’s slow going.  The Senate has passed three as a bundle (MilCon-VA, Agriculture, and Transportation-HUD).  The House has passed seven on almost strictly party lines. One other was defeated in September (Agriculture) and last week Johnson brought two to the floor — Transportation-HUD and Financial Services-General Government — but couldn’t get enough votes from his own party for them to pass and pulled them from consideration.

Johnson plans to keep trying, though. The Labor-HHS and Commerce-Justice-Science bills are on the schedule for this coming week and a second try at THUD.  CJS and Labor-HHS are so controversial they could not even get enough Republican support to pass the full House Appropriations Committee. They were reported from their respective subcommittees before summer recess, but sat there until recently when they were sent directly to Rules. The Rules Committee decides what amendments are allowed to be considered on the floor, time limits and other procedural matters.

The Rules Committee will meet to write the rule for the CJS bill, which includes NASA and NOAA, on Tuesday. If it gets through, it could come up on the floor any time thereafter. The CJS subcommittee approved $25.366 billion, slightly less than the $25.384 billion NASA got for FY2023, but substantially less than the $27.185 billion request.

NASA and NOAA are not the showstoppers in the bill.  Politico lays out what’s really controversial.

The Senate bills are completely different from those in the House. They adhere to the spending limits agreed to by McCarthy and President Biden and passed by the House and Senate as the Fiscal Responsibility Act. Most of the House bills are substantially below those caps. Defense, Homeland and MilCon-VA get plus-ups compared to last year, but the other bills are less than the FRA limits, which are more-or-less the FY2023 levels. The House bills also include anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ, and anti-diversity provisions that are anathema to Democrats.

Each bill has to pass both the House and Senate. Then they have to negotiate a compromise version to send to the President. That’s a time consuming process under the best of circumstances and these are not the best. Often they end up bundling all 12 bills together in an “omnibus” package even though just about everyone agrees that’s a terrible way to tackle appropriations. This year some House Republicans are particularly adamant that each bill pass separately, but time will tell if that’s feasible.

Getting all 12 bills done before the holidays as the Senate hopes, never mind January 1 when the one percent cut would go into effect, certainly seems like a tall order.

On top of the regular FY2024 bills, President Biden is requesting emergency supplemental funds. A $106 billion “national security” supplemental including aid for Ukraine, Israel, the Indo-Pacific and the U.S. southern border was sent to the Hill on October 20. A $56 billion “domestic” supplemental was announced on October 25.

At the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel meeting the next day, ASAP Chair Patricia Sanders revealed that funding for NASA to begin building a Deorbit Vehicle for the International Space Station was included in the supplemental request along with money to repair NASA’s TDRSS communications antennas in Guam damaged by Typhoon Mawar.

ASAP has been urging NASA to build an ISS deorbit capability for years. At the October 26 meeting. Sanders emphatically declared it is “not optional.” NASA is requesting $180 million for the Deorbit Vehicle, also called a Deorbit Tug, in FY2024, the first tranche of funding for what is expected to be a $1 billion program. ASAP is worried the program may be cut in NASA’s regular appropriations bill.

In a November 9 statement to SpacePolicyOnline.com, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson confirmed the domestic supplemental includes initial funding for the Deorbit Vehicle, and repairing facilities in Guam and at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in California from Typhoon Mawar and Hurricane Hilary.

The White House fact sheet about the domestic supplemental includes a table breaking down some of what’s included, but not specifics for NASA. NASA is not even mentioned, in fact. The only hint is that some of the funding is for disaster recovery on Guam.

The national security supplemental, which includes a bit of funding for the U.S. Space Force, is getting a lot of attention since some Republicans are opposed to more aid to Ukraine. Less has been said about the domestic supplemental. The Senate Appropriations Committee held a hearing on the domestic supplemental last week, but the focus was on the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services.

Congress has found a way to keep the government operating in other situations as seemingly grim as this one. What makes this time different is that Speaker Johnson is new at this — not just appropriations brinkmanship, but leadership of his Republican colleagues and the House overall. If he opts for a bipartisan approach like McCarthy he could end up in the same predicament. He reportedly is not a member of the House Freedom Caucus that deposed McCarthy, but his views are very similar and prominent HFC members were delighted he’s now Speaker. How long the honeymoon will last is the question. Perhaps just long enough to get another CR passed?