Source: The Hill
Congressional opposition to the president’s proposed budget for NASA stiffened on Thursday, as top Republican appropriators accused the White House of attempting to rob the agency of its mission.
While President Barack Obama retooled NASA’s spending plan last week in an effort to temper growing congressional opposition, leading Republicans on a Senate Appropriations panel said Thursday that the new proposal still fails to address their concerns.
At the same time, a growing number of Democrats also signaled they remain unsatisfied with the president’s recent revisions, which he debuted during a speech at Kennedy Space Center last week.
The fight boils down to how much money is spent on manned spaceflight.
Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), the ranking member on the Senate’s Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies subcommittee, said Thursday that the White House’s NASA plans would be insufficient as long as they call for an end to the Constellation program, an effort to send astronauts to the moon and Mars that began under President George W. Bush.
“The president’s plan only ensures the United States will be subservient to and reliant on other countries for our access to space,” Shelby said.
“Future generations will learn how the Chinese, Russians and even the Indians took the reins of human space exploration away from the United States,” he said.
Shelby is a longtime supporter of NASA.
NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center generates about $1 billion in economic activity for Alabama, according to the center.
To read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/93751-shelby-whacks-white-house-for-insane-nasa-budget