House and Senate advance their appropriations bills

The full Senate Appropriations Committee approved its Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies (CJS) appropriations bill Thursday morning, two days after the CJS subcommittee performed its markup of the bill. That spending bill provides a little more than $17.7 billion for NASA and transfers funding for weather satellite programs from NOAA to NASA. There were no reported amendments to the bill.

At almost the same, time, the CJS subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee marked up its version of the appropriations bill, which provides a little less than $17.6 billion for NASA and keeps weather satellites in NOAA. In his opening statement, subcommittee chairman Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) provided some additional details missing in the text of the legislation. Commercial crew would get $500 million in the House bill, but NASA would be directed to “winnow the commercial partners and advance the schedule for moving to traditional government procurement methods.” Both Wolf and ranking member Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-PA), in his separate statement, mentioned restoration of some funding for NASA’s planetary science program, specifically for Mars exploration. “[W]e are going to continue to work in this area as we move toward full Committee markup to make sure we have it correct,” Fattah said of NASA science funding.