Shelby's early budget moves look good for NASA in 2018

The Senate panel in charge of NASA funding could reject a White House spending proposal this week and pass a measure giving the space agency more money for fiscal year 2018. A subcommittee report set up that possibility today by recommending $19.5 billion for NASA instead of the $19.1 billion President Trump's "skinny budget" requested.

That would provide support for the Space Launch System being developed by NASA in Alabama, and it would also restore funds for some ongoing science missions targeted by the White House.

U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Tuscaloosa) said in a statement Tuesday that Trump's requested budget cut of $561 million "would erode on-going science missions, jeopardize core operations, eliminate the entire education directorate, and delay exploration launches."

Instead, Shelby said, the budget recommendation going to the full Appropriations Committee "continues support for ongoing science and exploration missions ... especially the Space Launch system, Orion capsule and their supporting launch facilities."

The measure heading to the full Appropriations Committee Thursday keeps the next generation of weather satellites on schedule and restores proposed cuts to NOAA's National Water Center. It also gives NOAA "more flexibility to allow states to take the lead in overseeing the fishery in the Gulf of Mexico," Shelby said.

Shelby is chairman of the subcommittee that funds NASA, the Justice Department and the Commerce Department. His remarks are a strong signal of congressional thinking, but Congress rarely passes full federal budgets. Instead, lawmakers are more likely to pass an "omnibus" spending measure known as a Continuing Resolution or CR to fund the government.

A CR is what the government is operating under now, and it expires Sept. 30. That gives Congress just over two months to fund NASA and the rest of the government for 2018.

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