By Emelie Rutherford
The Republican controlled House Appropriations Committee (HAC) is due to unveil today mid-year reductions to the White House’s unresolved budget proposal, including cuts of $379 million to NASA and $13.2 billion to the Pentagon.
The HAC released yesterday some details of its plan for the current fiscal year 2011 budget, which would amount to a $74 billion cut to President Barack Obama’s proposal and is expected to face stiff resistance in the Democratically-controlled Senate.
The panel unveiled yesterday a partial list of the 70 spending cuts that will be in a continuing resolution (CR) bill that would fund the federal government through the end of FY ’11 on Sept. 30. The short tally lists a $379 million reduction to President Barack Obama’s proposal for NASA.
Such a $379 million dip in Obama’s $19 billion NASA request would leave the agency with roughly $18.621 billion for this fiscal year. Compared to NASA’s FY ’10 budget, that $18.621 billion for FY ’11 would amount to a $103 million cut from one year to the next.
The HAC provided no further details yesterday on the NASA reduction. The committee, though, is expected to complete the CR legislation today, before the House debates it next week.
The space agency has been in limbo because Congress has not passed an FY ’11 appropriations bill for it or any aspect of the federal government.
Lawmakers agreed to kill former President George W. Bush’s Constellation space-exploration program in the NASA Authorization Act of 2010, which Obama signed into law on Oct. 11, 2010. Yet, until FY ’11 NASA appropriations legislation is passed, Constellation contracts remain in place with firms including Lockheed Martin [LMT], which has been developing the Orion capsule, and ATK [ATK] and Boeing [BA], which have worked on the Ares I rocket.
The HAC also wants to cut Obama’s FY ’11 Pentagon budget proposal by $13.2 billion. The committee, though, did not detail yesterday any of those defense cuts that it announced last week.
HAC Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) also wants to reduce Obama’s FY ’11 request for the Department of Homeland Security by $1.1 billion and military construction and veterans’ affairs by $1.3 billion.
A current short-term CR funding the government at FY ’10 levels is slated to expire March 4.
If Congress continued to fund the federal government in FY ’11 through a CR with FY ’10 spending levels, it would spend $32 billion more than the CR the HAC is advancing; such a setup would result is a $19 billion cut to Obama’s request for the defense budget. Some Democrats want to go that route of simply funding the FY ’11 budget at FY ’10 levels.
Officials in the Pentagon and defense industry are alarmed about the prospect of the FY ’11 defense budget remaining at FY ’10 levels, a scenario that could not only cut funding but also prevent new contracts and programs from starting.