Members of the House Science Committee Wednesday issued a stern warning to the White House to make some final decisions to restructure financing for the space station, or else Congress would kill the project.
The space station has come under increasingly frequent attack in recent weeks as reports by the GAO and a task force of independent financial auditors found the project is behind schedule and will require more funding than expected. The task force also questioned the administration's reliance on Russia for hardware and funding.
"We would like to work with the White House to get this program back on track," said Science Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., a space station supporter. "Last month we invited the Office of Management and Budget to testify about the administration's plan to fix the space station. OMB declined to appear before this committee. Instead, it offered a statement for the record which pledged to do nothing."
The OMB also declined to appear at Wednesday's hearing, and instead, Sensenbrenner said, "sent the NASA administrator to defend the very administration policies contributing to these problems."
Sensenbrenner said he and ranking member George Brown, D- Calif., "are sending the president a letter asking the White House to get back in the game by directing OMB to present a credible plan within 30 days for fixing the space station."
Action must be taken soon, Sensenbrenner said, or else support for space station funding in the VA-HUD appropriations bill may be in jeopardy. "The legislative calendar moves with or without the administration," he said.
Rep. David Weldon, R-Fla., another space station supporter, said: "My sources within the administration indicate that NASA has produced a report that sets forth a plan on how to remove the Russians from the critical path [of space station development]. It is my understanding that this report is being suppressed by the White House because of foreign policy issues."
Weldon, whose district includes the Kennedy Space Center, added: "I believe that the ill-conceived policy being pursued by the White House is jeopardizing the space station and costing the American taxpayers billions of dollars of unnecessary costs."
Brown, also a space station supporter, said, "We need a plan, not a continuing series of ad hoc adjustments to the latest station funding or programmatic crisis."
OMB officials contacted by CongressDaily declined to comment.
NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin said his agency is working to address the problems raised by the GAO and the task force report. He said the station could require an additional $300 million; a GAO report said the space station may require an additional $2 billion through the life of the project.
"If we cancel the space station, we will be canceling manned space flight," Goldin said, adding that "it would be devastating" to cancel the station.
The harsh comments by space station supporters give even more ammunition to space station opponents, including Rep. Tim Roemer, D-Ind., who plans to again offer an amendment to the FY99 VA-HUD appropriations bill to kill space station funding.
"Throwing more money at the space station is adding fuel to the fire," Roemer said. "We should not grant NASA's request for supplemental funding. Rather, we should hold NASA and the Russian government's feet to the fire."
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