WASHINGTON — Republican senators used a hearing on NASA’s fiscal 12 months 2024 budget proposal to criticize the agency’s role in topics like climate change and social issues they argued were a distraction to its efforts to return humans to the moon.
Through the 90-minute hearing by the Senate Commerce Committee May 16, senators raised few issues with the substance of the agency’s $27.2 billion budget proposal for fiscal 12 months 2024. As a substitute, top Republicans on the committee targeted items on the periphery, from plans to exchange the agency’s fleet of motorcars with electric vehicles to investments in diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
“I do worry sometimes that we could also be losing deal with what makes America the preeminent spacefaring nation,” claimed Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), rating member of the committee. He cited development of an equity motion plan by NASA and regulations that NASA, together with the Defense Department and General Services Administration, to have contractors discover their greenhouse gas emissions.
“Reasonably than helping us win the space race, the proposed rule would be sure that NASA could do less exploration and fewer science for more taxpayer dollars,” he said. He added that he and fellow Republican senators were dissatisfied with the response from NASA Administrator Bill Nelson to a letter they’d in regards to the proposed rule.
Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), rating member of the committee’s space subcommittee, made similar arguments. “I strongly disagree with this administration’s obsession with misguided, woke policies related to climate change and variety, equity and inclusion,” he said, arguing they were a diversion from a human return to the moon. “We should be laser-like focused on our approach.”
The 2 senators claimed that such policies risked politicizing NASA, which has traditionally enjoyed bipartisan support. Nelson, testifying before the committee, reiterated his longstanding desire to maintain NASA a “nonpartisan” agency.
He added, though, that he didn’t necessarily agree with their claims. “The fact, Sen. Cruz — and you understand I really like you — is the proven fact that now we have political differences,” he said. “But I can guarantee you that NASA is being run in a nonpartisan way.”
Nelson declined to have interaction on among the other criticisms about climate change and DEI policies beyond noting that the rulemaking on the greenhouse gas regulations remains to be in progress. Echoing comments from past hearings, he agreed with them that NASA is racing China to the moon, and warned that if China got to the lunar south pole before NASA, it’d claim water ice resources there.
Other Republican senators on the hearing didn’t echo those criticisms, focusing their questions on topics corresponding to aeronautics, space nuclear propulsion and, within the case of former committee chairman Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), investments in NASA’s Stennis Space Center in his state.
Multiyear NASA authorization
The chair of the committee, Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), reiterated on the hearing her desire for a brand new NASA authorization. She announced in February that she desired to enact a multiyear authorization only a 12 months after a NASA authorization was included within the CHIPS and Science Act.
“It’s my goal to finish one other NASA bill this Congress, this time with a multiyear authorization that may help be sure that the nation’s leading space and aeronautic research agency has stable, predictable funding that it must succeed,” she said. That may be the primary multiyear authorization for NASA since 2010.
Nelson, who as a senator spearheaded the passage of that 2010 authorization act, endorsed a multiyear authorization, saying it would offer stability for each the agency and industry. “I might welcome a multiyear approach,” he said. “I feel a five-year authorization bill could be very, thoroughly received within the aerospace community.”
