Richard Shelby: Budget Hawk, Hometown Pork Winner

Sen. Richard Shelby

New details are emerging about the Senate’s proposal to spend $18 billion on NASA for FY 2014. As usual, some of the most interesting comments are coming from Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), the Senate’s biggest supporter of the Space Launch System and, ironically, one of its biggest opponents of massive, pork-laden government program.

Alabama.com’s Lee Roop reports that the Senate is much more generous with commercial crew:

The Senate subcommittee’s budget also appropriates $775 million to commercial space programs, but at Shelby’s initiative withholds $250 million until NASA does a study that certifies how long the International Space Station will be usable after 2020, its current projected lifespan.

The Obama Administration asked for $821.4 million. Two House subcommittee have proposed $500 million and $700 million to be spent on the program next year. The overall House budget for NASA is either $16.6 billion or $16.8 billion, depending on the subcommittee.

 Shelby explained his rationale to Defense Daily:

SAC-CJS Ranking Member Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), though, said he added language to the bill “that provides greater accountability and budgetary transparency to the commercial-crew program to ensure that taxpayers are getting the best value for their dollar.”

….He crafted language–for both the CJS bill and the committee’s report on it–that aims to ensure the commercial-crew effort is “cost beneficial,” an aide said. The ISS is supposed to be decommissioned in 2020, and some people are concerned about investing heavily in a commercial-crew program that would make, at most, six flights to the station.

Shelby told Defense Daily his commercial-crew language is intended “to get the most for the dollar and make sure that people who do work for any government agency (are) accountable.”

“There’s been evidence that some loose standards (are) out there and we’re trying to tighten them up,” he said after the SAC-CJS markup.

However, SLS is being designed in Huntsville and is one of the things that helps keep NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in business. So, it’s one of the big government programs that Shelby likes.

Shelby’s concerns about ISS are reasonable. If ISS is not extended beyond 2020, then the commercial crew services will have a limited lifespan. NASA is looking to extend ISS operations to 2028.

Of course, Shelby and his compatriots have been instrumental in pushing the commercial crew schedule back by two years to 2017 by cutting the Administration’s request each year. Those actions have resulted in NASA making hundreds of millions of dollars in additional payments to the Russians for crew services.

Shelby’s talk of “loose standards”  is clearly a reference to the less costly and more flexible Space Act Agreements that NASA is using for the Commercial Crew Program. There has been a tug-of-war between NASA and Congress over when to shift to more expensive Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) contracting.

One wishes that Shelby was as concerned about taxpayers when it comes to the Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion deep spacecraft. The two projects are eating up over $3 billion per year, and they won’t fly with astronauts until 2021. NASA is not schedule to launch them again for another four years after that.

Interestingly, Shelby says he will vote against the Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies measure when it comes to a vote before the full committee even though the NASA portion of it contains everything he wants for SLS and Orion.

Specifically, Shelby said the $52.3 billion in the bill is the full amount the subcommittee was allocated in an overall $1.058 trillion Senate Budget Resolution earlier this year. Spending of $1 trillion-plus next year would break the $967 billion limit imposed on federal spending by the sequestration law. “For that reason, and that reason alone,” Shelby said, “I will vote against the CJS bill at full committee.”

Yep, Shelby sees too much wasteful spending. Wonder how that happens?