Still Time for a NASA Authorization Bill This Year? – UPDATE

UPDATE, September 15:  The Senate Commerce Committee will markup the Senate version of a FY2017 NASA authorization bill on September 21 at 10:00 am ET.

Original Story, September 13, 2016: Rumors have been circulating for months that NASA’s authorization committees will try to get a new NASA authorization bill enacted before the 114th Congress gavels to a close at the end of the year. Rep. Brian Babin (R-TX) yesterday again exhorted the Senate to act on a NASA authorization bill the House passed last year and a Senate draft bill — different from that one — is circulating, but time is getting short.  One goal is to provide stability to NASA during the presidential transition and passage of legislation would give Congress a chance to get its policy choices formally on the table.

The House passed a FY2015 NASA authorization bill by voice vote in February 2015.  Although the funding recommendation were only for that fiscal year, which is long past, the policy provisions were adopted on a bipartisan basis.  Some have been overtaken by events, but Babin, who spoke at a Commercial Spaceflight Federation breakfast meeting yesterday morning, called it a “perfectly good bill” and urged the Senate to pass it or “quickly work with the House to negotiate a compromise.”   He noted that the House and Senate versions of the FY2017 Commerce-Justice-Science appropriations bill, which includes NASA, are in a “mature” stage and their funding levels could be “reconciled” into a new authorization bill.

Authorization bills set policy and recommend funding levels, but only appropriations bills actually provide money to agencies like NASA.

The last NASA authorization act was enacted in 2010.   Its policy provisions remain in force, but the funding recommendations were only for three years, FY2011-FY2013.

Babin chairs the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee’s Space Subcommittee.  The committee approved a more recent bill for FY2016 and FY2017 (H.R. 2039), but on a strictly party-line basis because, among other things, it recommended deep cuts to NASA’s earth science program that Democrats strongly opposed.  No further action has occurred on that bill.

The FY2015 bill, H.R. 810 (itself is an update of a FY2014 bill that passed the House, but not the Senate), avoided highly charged partisan issues. The 128-page bill covers a lot of ground.  

A 49-page staff draft of a Senate authorization bill for FY2017 is circulating that is more narrowly focused, but at a top level has similar themes.  One key point on which the bills agree is that human exploration is a core NASA mission.  Both bills support continued use of the International Space Station (ISS) and sending humans to Mars and other locations in deep space.   Both want more details from NASA on how that will be accomplished.  H.R. 810 requires NASA to develop and provide to Congress a “Human Exploration Roadmap” detailing capabilities and technologies needed.  The draft Senate bill calls for a “strategic framework” and a “critical decision plan.”  Both require that the role of international and commercial partners be included.

One focus of the draft Senate bill not included in H.R. 810 is stability at NASA during the presidential transition.  It includes a “sense of Congress” section that “the United States, in collaboration with its international and commercial partners, should sustain and build upon our national space commitments and investments across Administrations with a continuity of purpose…”  As discussed at a recent hearing before the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation subcommittee that oversees NASA, there is bipartisan concern that NASA’s programs could be disrupted again as they were when President Obama took office and cancelled the Constellation program begun under his predecessor, George W. Bush. 

It should be noted that passage of a new NASA authorization bill may not provide any such assurance, however.  Congress passed two NASA authorization laws supporting Bush’s Vision for Space Exploration and its Constellation program to return humans to the lunar surface by 2020 and then go on to Mars.   One passed in 2005 when Republicans controlled Congress, the other in 2008 when Democrats were in control.  The pair of laws signaled not only bipartisan congressional consensus, but agreement between the White House and Congress on the path forward for human exploration, a long sought goal of human spaceflight advocates who had seen earlier presidential initiatives fail to win congressional support.

The existence of those laws did not, however, deter President Obama from cancelling Constellation after a review by a blue ribbon panel concluded that NASA’s budget would have to ramp up to $3 billion more per year to implement it.  Similarly, a new President could decide that the current program, with the goal of putting astronauts in orbit around Mars in the 2030s, is unaffordable.

Another place where H.R. 810 and the draft Senate bill agree is skepticism about the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) as one of the elements of that plan to get to Mars.  At the time H.R. 810 was written it was called the Asteroid Retrieval Mission and the bill requires a report explaining the need for and cost of the program.  The draft Senate bill points out that the cost for ARM has risen and the NASA Advisory Council has raised concerns, and the program is competing for resources with other aspects of the human exploration program.   It does not call for the program to be terminated, but offers a sense of Congress statement that alternatives should be considered for demonstrating the technologies needed for the humans-to-Mars mission and requires a report from NASA on those alternatives.

NASA’s earth science program remains contentious in Congress, with many House and Senate Republicans arguing that NASA should focus on space exploration, not studying Earth, which other agencies could do.  Democrats insist that earth science research from space is a key aspect of NASA’s science program and no other agency launches earth science research satellites.  NOAA is responsible for operational weather satellites and until recently was planning to launch some climate research sensors, but the White House decided to transfer those to NASA.   H.R. 810, written in 2015, apparently foresaw such a turn of events and stated that if NASA is given additional responsibilities in earth science, the White House needed to provide it with additional money.   The draft Senate bill is silent on earth science policy.

As for funding, the figures in H.R. 810 are no longer relevant. The draft Senate authorization bill would authorize $19.508 billion, the same total that is in the House Appropriations Committee’s version of the FY2017 Commerce-Justice-Science appropriations bill.  The Senate Appropriations Committee approved $19.306 billion, which is $202 million less.  The draft Senate authorization bill allocates that $202 million to the Exploration account.  NASA’s other accounts are funded at the same level as in the Senate Appropriations Committee’s bill.

Congress is scheduled to be in session for the rest of this month before adjourning until after the November elections, although there are indications that the Senate may leave earlier than that if it can pass a FY2017 Continuing Resolution (CR) to keep the government funded for the first part of FY2017.   If it does, that would compress the time for reaching agreement on a NASA authorization bill.  H.R. 810 and the draft Senate bill are similar enough to provide a basis for compromise, but different enough to prevent one.  It is a matter of how motivated the involved parties are to pass a bill prior to this next presidential transition.