Lawmakers Aim To Make House, Senate Fiscal 2009 Bills Similar So A Conference Committee Is Unneeded

Nelson: Clinton Would Be Most Supportive Of NASA; Obama Position Is Improving; But McCain Wants To Freeze Programs Such As Space; Nelson Counsels Him

Congressional supporters of NASA are pushing a plan to gain a total $1 billion extra for NASA in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2009, and another $1 billion in fiscal 2010, to speed developing the Orion-Ares next-generation U.S. spacecraft system.

For the fiscal 2009 measures now before Congress, the goal will be to make the House and Senate versions so similar that no time-wasting House-Senate conference committee will be required.

That was the message from Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee space, aeronautics and related sciences subcommittee and a former NASA astronaut, speaking before a luncheon of the Washington Space Business Roundtable at the University Club in Washington, D.C. (Please see full transcript of his remarks in this issue.)

"We’re going to adopt in the Senate [fiscal 2009] authorization bill a lot of the stuff that has come out in the House bill," Nelson said.

"And the idea from a legislative standpoint is so that we can avoid having to go through all the extra time of appointing a conference committee and so forth. So that there can be a lot more similarity [in] bills that we can then negotiate the differences, easy, without having to have a formal conference committee. And then send that back to both" chambers of Congress for final approval.

He said that $200 million extra for NASA is being pushed by Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.), who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee commerce, justice, science and related agencies subcommittee, in a war funding measure. And NASA backers will attempt to insert another $800 million in NASA appropriations measures, he said, for a total of $1 billion in fiscal 2009.

Nelson, as chairman of the Senate authorizing subcommittee for NASA, works closely with Mikulski, who leads the Senate appropriations subcommittee for the space agency.

However, the question now is whether Congress will pass those financial bills to support NASA programs in fiscal 2009, or whether the legislature will leave Washington without passing the bills, in which case NASA will suffer frozen funding levels, hurting its programs, according to NASA Administrator Mike Griffin. (Please see full story in this issue.)

As for the $200 million in added funds for NASA, Nelson said that it is in an emergency war funding supplemental budget bill that passed 75 to 22. That vote means that if Senate passage of the $200 million is mirrored in the House, even if President Bush vetoes the measure, his veto can be overridden, Nelson said.

"If we can hold that in the negotiations with the House, and then if we can avoid a presidential veto, at least we’ve got a veto-proof bill that we can override the veto," the senator said.

If $1 billion extra can be found for NASA this year, and another $1 billion next year, that would permit accelerating the Orion-Ares spacecraft system development program, so that the first Orion-Ares manned flight would be in 2013 instead of the now-planned 2015, Nelson noted. He cautioned, however, that a bipartisan attempt to secure the extra NASA funding last year failed in Congress when it was flatly rejected by the White House Office of Management and Budget.

Nelson for months has been warning that thousands of workers at Kennedy Space Center, especially contractor employees, may be laid off during the gap from the space shuttles retiring in October 2010 to the first Orion-Ares flight in 2015. He has noted angrily that during that gap, the United States will be paying Russians to build Soyuz spacecraft to transport U.S. astronauts to the International Space Station.

Meanwhile, NASA also will be paying Lockheed Martin Corp. [LMT] as prime contractor to develop the Orion space capsule crew expeditionary vehicle. And various parts of the Ares rocket to lift Orion into space will be developed separately by firms such as The Boeing Co. [BA], Alliant Techsystems Inc. [ATK], and Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, a unit of United Technologies Corp. [UTX].

That $2 billion extra funding, so Orion-Ares flies two years sooner, would be a major benefit for the U.S. space program, he said. And there would be other bonuses as well, including aid for the Kenedy Space Center (KSC) in his home state of Florida.

"That does a number of things for us," Nelson said. "First of all, we don’t have to spend as much money paying the Russians" to transport U.S. astronauts and cargo during the gap aboard Russian Soyuz space vehicles. "Second thing is, we don’t have to have the massive layoffs if you’re dealing with three years instead of five years which could extend to six or seven years. And, in other words, we don’t have to lay off Americans at the Kennedy Space Center in order to hire Russians in Moscow to build Soyuzes that we can buy a ride to go to the space station that we’ve spent $75 billion of American money on a $100 billion investment up there."

What he didn’t mention is that Russian leaders are fighting the United States furiously over plans to install a European Missile Defense system in the Czech Republic and Poland. (Please see separate story in this issue.)

Nelson decried the "potential devastation to our folks at the Kennedy Space Center, a devastation that we had lived through once" when U.S. manned spaceflights ceased between the Apollo program and the initiation of space shuttle flights.

Nelson said when the next president is elected in November, he will lobby that person strongly to find more work for KSC.

Workers there, he said, are depressed, worried about the impending loss of jobs in two years.

"People, to use a Southern expression, at home, they’re down in the mouth," Nelson said. "Well, you don’t want your people down in the mouth when you’re getting ready to launch another space shuttle [Saturday]. You want your people up, a lot of esprit de corps, so that they’re doing everything that they can to make it work, and to be safe for all these other launches."

Aside from the total $2 billion to accelerate Orion-Ares, Nelson also wishes to add on to the old space shuttle program, seeking $300 million to pay for one extra shuttle flight that would carry costly experiments to the space station.

When the new president is elected, Nelson said, "we’re going to try to convince [that person] to give him [Griffin] another $300 million so he can fly another shuttle flight, and so he can load it up with all those science experiments that ought to be up there, because that’s the reason we have the space station in the first place, is scientific experimentation. So we’re going to do that."

Nelson said that politics can play a constructive role here. He is telling his three fellow senators who are running for president that Florida may once again play a critical role in deciding who next shall occupy the White House.

For example, Bush won the 2000 presidential election when he was awarded the lode of Florida Electoral College votes.

"I am banking on the fact that I believe that Florida is going to be critical again in this presidential election," Nelson said. "And therefore I am going to take this opportunity to educate the two presidential candidates, that if they want to win Florida, this is mightily important."

He referred to the two Democratic presidential candidates, Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York and Sen. Barak Obama of Illinois. The winner will take on Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

"Now, I can tell you that I’ve already been trying to educate the two Democratic candidates," Nelson said. "And I have spoken to both of them today, on the floor of the U.S. Senate, about the NASA program. And if you read any news accounts of Barak in Florida yesterday, you will see that he made a different statement" more favorable to NASA. "And I thanked him for that this morning, and he said, ‘I’ve been listening to you.’ And I said, ‘I know how to win in Florida.’"

Nelson also has spoken with Obama’s opponent.

"I’ve been saying the same thing to Hillary for a long time, and Hillary’s got the best position of all three of them on the space program," Nelson said.

Which brought Nelson to the final, and from his viewpoint perhaps the worst, of the three in terms of support for the space program.

"Now, McCain is not exactly a warm and fuzzy guy," Nelson said, drawing laughter from the audience. "But I want you to know, I get along with him. And the reason I get along with McCain … is that I just feel that anybody who’s been through what he’s been through, he’s entitled to be prickly. And he is prickly," Nelson added, to more laughter.

McCain as a Navy aircraft carrier pilot in the war in Vietnam was shot down, and then held in a prisoner of war camp called the Hanoi Hilton for six years.

Nelson said that while McCain can be tough to deal with, they have formed a bond. "I can figure out how to deal with a porcupine," Nelson said, to still more laughter. "And I have shared thoughts with him before. McCain and I have a mutually respectful relationship, and it is my intention to lean on him pretty hard. A lot of his big supporters are big supporters of mine in Florida."

But still, McCain has positions that threaten NASA and its programs.

"The thing that worries me about John is that John gets into these rigid positions, and it’s hard to get him off of it," Nelson said. "And one of his positions is that he wants to freeze domestic nondiscretionary spending, and if we did that, then, we wouldn’t be able to do all this [space] stuff."

If McCain refuses to change his stance, it will harm Floridians working in the space program, Nelson indicated, adding that he will tell the workers just what McCain proposes.

"And if that’s his position, then I’m going to make sure that the people of Florida know that, especially the people of East Central Florida," Nelson said. "And so maybe we’ll have a chance to get a little more flexibility out of him, if Florida becomes a key."

Nelson noted a new Quinnipiac University poll shows Clinton beating McCain in the general election in Florida, 48 percent to 41 percent. But the poll also shows McCain beating Obama in Florida, 45 percent to 41 percent.

"And I could tell you by my gut, since I pretty well understand Florida, that that’s about right. Now that’s a snapshot now. That of course can change. And some of that is reflective of the tenseness in the Democratic Party over a primary [election contest] that’s virtually split, 50-50. So that can change. But that tells you the volatility," Nelson said.

Separately, the senator proposed that the next president, whomever it might be, should form a National Space Council in the White House, which he said wouldn’t require enabling legislation.

Finally, Nelson warned the luncheon group that public support must be built up for the space program, to generate political backing for it.

"The American people want to be enthralled," Nelson said. "And kids want to be excited. And we want those kids to be excited. Because then they start getting energized about math, and science and technology. And that’s where America, as she competes in the world of this century, that’s where she competes, and stays as a global economic leader – is our ability to produce in technology. What better way than coming out of our space program."

But he warned that public support for the space program won’t be built if those in the space community speak only among themselves, and only about past victories such as the moon missions, instead of future challenges.

"One final caution," Nelson said. "There is an inherent characteristic in the space community. It is an inherent human characteristic, that we like to talk to ourselves. We can’t afford that any more.

"We’ve got to talk to the American people. We can’t keep just giving solace to ourselves, and talking about the glory days among ourselves. We’ve got to talk to them. So that will translate into political action in the allocation of dollars in ever increasingly tightened budgetary situations."