LAS VEGAS — The chairman of the Senate appropriations subcommittee that funds NASA says he wants to quickly pass a spending bill that includes the agency to avoid a potential deterioration in the appropriations process.
In a talk at the Space Foundation’s Innovate Space: Global Economic Summit event July 22, Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), chairman of the Senate’s commerce, justice and science (CJS) appropriations subcommittee, said he would like to attach the CJS spending bill the committee approved July 18 to another bill to be considered in the coming days by the full Senate.
Moran said the Senate will take up a version of the “MilCon-VA” spending bill that passed the House, which funds the Department of Veterans Affairs as well as military construction projects. Senators will consider attaching to it several other spending bills to expedite their passage.
“The question is whether that House bill will become the vehicle by which we attach two or three other appropriations bills,” he said. “My task at the moment is to make sure the attachment includes commerce, justice and science, and therefore NASA.”
He said he is concerned that current bipartisan cooperation in advancing appropriations bills in the Senate will collapse in the months to come. “I’m worried that the appropriations process may deteriorate over time, particularly if there is another rescission effort,” he said, or request by the White House to revoke funds already appropriated.
“I think the atmosphere may sour on the appropriations process, and it’s important for us to get our bill, this bill” through the appropriations process, he said.
Even if that effort succeeds in the Senate, the bill will still need to be reconciled with a House CJS appropriations bill that provides slightly less overall funding for NASA: $24.838 billion versus $24.9 billion in the Senate. There are also different allocations with NASA, with the House providing more for exploration and less for science than the Senate bill.
Moran played down the differences for NASA funding between the two bills. “In normal times, you might just split the difference,” he said. “We’re ready to go to work to get our bill across the Senate floor and then conference with the House to make sure there’s an end product.”
Seeking a NASA administrator
Moran also discussed the need for NASA to have a Senate-confirmed administrator, reiterating comments he made at the Paris Air Show in June, shortly after the White House withdrew the nomination of Jared Isaacman to lead the agency.
“While I had nothing to do with the selection of Mr. Isaacman, I worked hard to get his nomination considered on the Senate floor,” he said, noting that the full Senate had planned to take up the nomination June 3. President Trump announced he was withdrawing the nomination May 31.
He called on the White House to swiftly select a new nominee for NASA administrator, offering support to expedite Senate confirmation of that individual. “We will work to get an administrator through the Senate process, through the Commerce Committee,” he said. “We look forward to that nominee.”
NASA is currently led on an acting basis by Sean Duffy, the secretary of transportation, but Moran said having one person holding both jobs was far from ideal.
“I think he is an extraordinarily capable person,” he said of Duffy, “but I think these jobs — the one that he has at the Transportation Department and one that he now has at NASA — are each more than consuming in and of themselves,” he said. “So, I’m hopeful, and encouraging the administration to quickly choose a nominee to be considered by the Senate.”
Moran added he did not know who the White House might be considering to lead NASA, only that he has been told a selection would happen soon. “Although ‘soon’ in Washington, DC is often longer than what ‘soon’ is in Kansas.”
Workforce concerns
Moran said he was aware of the letter signed by hundreds of current and former NASA employees published July 21. That document, called the Voyager Declaration, dissented with NASA plans to reduce its workforce and cancel missions as outlined in the administration’s fiscal year 2026 budget request.
Those workforce concerns, he said, are “terribly difficult” particularly at NASA, where “the capabilities of people are hugely important and, in many instances, are difficult to replace.”
Moran chairs the aviation, space and innovation subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee, and suggested those concerns may be a topic for that subcommittee.
“Any time someone at an agency or a department or a business is suggesting that there are safety issues that are compromised, we ought to take that kind of information seriously,” he said, “to make certain that decisions that are made at NASA are the right decisions as far as the safety of those we’re sending to space and those who work in the industry.”