Texas lawmakers press for more NASA funding

WASHINGTON — Texas members of Congress on Tuesday led ringing bipartisan support for a $3 billion surge in annual NASA spending to protect the existing manned space program.

Their advocacy on NASA's behalf came as a thinly veiled warning to President Barack Obama to help put the beleaguered program back on track.

Members of the 43-member House committee that oversees the $18.7 billion-a-year space agency pivoted off testimony by retired aerospace executive Norman Augustine to back the added spending, which came in recommendations to Obama by an independent panel of experts appointed by the White House and led by Augustine.

The Committee on Science and Technology heard Augustine's testimony as Obama faced a decision on the panel's option to boost NASA spending by approximately $3 billion a year by 2014.

The increase would be part of a cumulative $27.1 billion hike by 2020 to underwrite a robust manned space program with the ultimate goal of reaching Mars. The spending increase would amount to a 27 percent boost over the current spending path of $99.1 billion over the next decade.

“Why don't we just fund the program we've all agreed to?” declared Rep. Ralph Hall of Rockwall, the committee's senior Republican. “Why should multibillion-dollar bailouts of banks and insurance companies come at the expense of our talented scientists, engineers and technicians who make the impossible look easy?”

Conclusions ‘premature'

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston, returned to her former committee to endorse the added spending. “This Congress has an obligation to the American people to find that $3 billion,” she said.

“We asked you to call balls and strikes and you did a very good job of that,” added Rep. Pete Olson, R-Sugar Land, whose congressional district includes NASA's Johnson Space Center.

Augustine's assessment “has thrown down a funding challenge at Congress,” said Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin, as he pressed the retired head of Lockheed Martin Corp. to explain what taxpayers would get for the $3 billion annual increase. McCaul voiced satisfaction when Augustine made it clear that spending the additional $3 billion would cover completion of the next generation of manned spacecraft known as the Orion crew capsule and the Ares rocket — projects crucial to Houston's Johnson Space Center.

Augustine's panel recommended that NASA abandon astronauts' financially “unsustainable” return to the moon by 2020 in favor of step-by-step manned space exploration costing $3 billion more a year and relying on extending use of the orbiting International Space Station by five years to 2020.

White House spokeswoman Gannet Tseggai declined to go beyond a statement that she made last Tuesday after Augustine's panel delivered a 12-page preliminary report to the president.

Obama “has on numerous occasions confirmed his commitment to human space exploration and the goal of ensuring that the nation is on a vigorous and sustainable path to achieving our boldest aspirations in space,” Tseggai said. “Until the options are thoroughly considered, it would be premature for anyone to draw conclusions from the committee's work.”