Henry Vanderbilt is reporting that HR 5781 will not be put on the calendar this session:
HR.5781 is not on the House calendar for this week. Our sources tell us that at least in part due to a significant number of constituent calls late last week, the House Leadership does not (currently) intend to put HR.5781 on the calendar this session (at least not in its current form.) We hear that negotiations with Senate Authorizers continue, with the outcome (if any) now more likely to be based on the Senate bill. So, the battle is going well – to everyone who made a contact so far, thanks! But the battle over this NASA Authorization continues. We need to keep the pressure on, with the general message being, NASA Exploration R&D (including Commercial Crew and Cargo) is a good thing to fund, while NASA in-house booster developments (see numbers in the Generic reason below) are very likely to be massive wastes of scarce funds. Those of you who’ve already contacted your Representative might want to contact your Senators now too. Those of you who haven’t yet made a contact, why not? More when we know more.
The worst has been avoided, but the outcome could still be bad. Stay tuned.
I tend to err on the side of saving any celebration for when we’re actually out of the woods… 🙂
Just sayin.
~Jon
Well, no, I’m reporting that HR.5781 *probably* won’t be put on the calendar during this session. We haven’t won the war – the earliest we might be able to say that is when we see what actually gets appropriated for NASA, weeks or months from now.
Way too soon for victory parades. But this particular battle in the war is going well, so far, yes.
I’m reminded of the old fighter pilot wisdom though: “When the other guy’s plane starts smoking is no time to pull back and watch. It’s time to hit it with everything you’ve got and finish the job.”
I should probably rewrite that SAS website update to say “probably”; I can see how it’s possible to misread that as “definitely”. OK, I’m off to edit raw html in the text editor on this netbook, since I’m on the road for another day…
Great news so far. It gladdens me to think that our voices might have an impact on policy.
We need more of this.
OK, done. I’ve subbed “probably (no guarantees, of course) won’t put HR.5781 on the calendar this session” for “does not (currently) intend to put HR.5781 on the calendar this session”, to make it more clear that current Congressional intentions are no guarantee of future Congressional actions. Not even of next week’s Congressional actions – the calendar post cited does (as stated) only cover this week, not the whole (through early October) session.
Question for Henry: it seems to me that a CR would be even better, because it would be a major and possibly decisive blow to the Shuttle stack. Even if that doesn’t win us the war, doesn’t it give us a better position next year? Am I misinterpreting this? I guess I don’t understand why you would prefer the Senate bill, but I’m sure you’ve thought it through. Can you share your thinking?
MPM – It’s not an either/or thing. There’s a two-track process going on in the Congress, “Authorization” and “Appropriations”. Think of Authorization as an official shopping list, Appropriation as writing the actual checks. Some years nothing much is changing and they don’t even do an Authorization for NASA, but when big changes are proposed it can matter a lot.
The current battle is over the final form of the Authorization, which will be quite influential this year. A “Continuing Resolution” or CR is a temporary catchall Appropriation – that will happen toward the end of this month, since FY 2010 ends September 30th. NASA funding will probably be part of that CR, if they don’t get a separate NASA Appropriation done later this month. Either way, NASA’s Appropriation will very likely reflect whatever Authorization finally gets worked out, possily even if it’s a CR – rule #1 of Congress is, Congress writes the rules, and rewrites them at need. (Even a plain vanilla CR that says continue as before will only last a few months before NASA gets a specific new Appropriations bill.)
Thanks for that explanation. I knew there was a difference between appropriation and authorisation but I hadn’t realised a CR was exclusively on the appropriation side. So what happens if time runs out without an agreement, so there is no new authorisation at all? Would that be the fairly rosy scenario I imagine it to be? That is Shuttle is retired on schedule, the workforce is dispersed, part of the infrastructure is demolished, work on a doomed Ares I continues and the hand of commercial space is enormously strengthened?
Here is a link to a letter to Congress from Freeman Dyson, John S Lewis and me:
http://ssi.org/2010/09/space-studies-institute-urges-the-congress-to-defeat-h-r-5781/#more-525
You are invited to sign it and to fax it to your Representative and Senators.
The SSI is fortunate to have such a prominent scientist at the helm.
In theory, under a simple CR, NASA would be funded as they are this year, and would carry on the same programs in more or less the same way. In practice, the best answer I have is, “it depends”. Some combination of what the Administration wants, what NASA HQ wants, what the Congress wants, and what the available resources allow would prevail. One option Congress has to increase the weight in this mix of what they want is to write NASA-specific instructions into even a CR. Will they do that? What might those instructions be? No way to say at this point. More when I know more…
It’s looking pretty likely that Congress will recess 1 October, so they can campaign. Inside the beltway, everyone’s expecting a CR.
CR + another Shuttle disaster == end of NASA.
Hopefully they won’t be so stupid as to take CR as carte blanche to do more than STS-135 – which I think is already ill-advised.
If you look at what our congress is doing in the general assembly, you wonder what the hell they think is going on outside of Washington.
My lone Congressman has a bill in the schedule (docket?) and I have no idea why he’s proposing this legislation while Nero fiddles and Rome burns. I looked at his record of bills introduced and he is contributing to the “H.R. 3984 – Let’s Rename This Fire Hydrant In Honor Of Faithful Dog Spot Act” problem that’s killing our government.
We have to stop the wasting of time on those BS “Acts” to honor, remember, note, encourage, express, or recognize various inconsequential dates, places or organizations.
Please write YOUR congressperson and say “stop it with the BS Legislation!”
Thanks folks.
Henry:
Any idea where the calls are coming from? I did an interview late last week on one of Tucson’s biggest conservative talker morning shows, and encouraged people to call. Then my organization started a phone/text message program to do the same thing.
I’d like to know if we’re having an impact.
Bennett,
[[[We have to stop the wasting of time on those BS “Acts” to honor, remember, note, encourage, express, or recognize various inconsequential dates, places or organizations.]]]
Lots of luck, its those “Acts” that gets them votes in elections, not their position on bills like the NASA authorization bill which no one beyond a hand full of space advocates care about…
MPM,
[[[Question for Henry: it seems to me that a CR would be even better, because it would be a major and possibly decisive blow to the Shuttle stack.]]]
Be careful what you wish for as it may also have unintended consequences for New Space. It depends on what is in the CR.
Be careful what you wish for as it may also have unintended consequences for New Space. It depends on what is in the CR.
Perhaps, but so far I’ve only heard dire warnings from SDLV supporters.
Andrew,
At least one call came from me and I’m sure others came from other regular readers of this blog. I live in the 35th district of California which is represented by Maxine Waters. The SpaceX plant happens to be just about exactly in the geometric centroid of the district. I called her local office and spoke to a very polite staffer. I didn’t spend any time on the space policy aspects of HR.5781; I simply said that the bill would have a significant negative impact on a major employer in the Congresswoman’s district and that the drafters of this measure were doing this simply to keep federal money flowing, undeservedly, to companies in their own districts. I requested she talk to Rep. Hoyer about letting HR.5781 die by not scheduling it for consideration. Politicians may or may not understand questions of policy, but they always understand an attempt to piss in their own rice bowl. For what it’s worth, the staffer had heard of SpaceX so perhaps the call was actually acted upon.