Rep. Posey Says President's Budget Ignores NASA Authorization Bill

Rep. Bill Posey, R-Rockledge, says Barack Obama's budget ignores the NASA Authorization bill the president signed into law last year by decreasing funding for the next human space flight launch system from $2.6 billion to $1.8 billion and decreased funding for a new crew vehicle from $1.4 billion to $1 billion.

NASA officials have complained that the legislation passed by Congress and signed by the president asked NASA to do too much with too little for advancing human space flight and the next generation launch vehicle.

After the administration let NASA flounder for the past two years, a flawed NASA authorization bill was finally agreed to and signed into law. Now the administration is proposing to ignore this law, placing a higher priority on global warming research and making cuts to the next generation launch vehicle, said Posey.

Over two years ago, the president promised to close the space gap, but now he seems intent on repeating the events that created the space gap in the first place putting in place a new rocket design and then trying to underfund the effort, ensuring that it will never happen and ceding American leadership in space to China and Russia.

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