Obama Asks Congress to move $100M from NASA for Job initiative

NASA stands to lose $100 million under an amended budget ask for U.S. President Barack Obama sent to Congress June 18. The money, a small part of the roughly $19 billion NASA could get under the 2011 budget request Obama sent to Congress in February, would instead go to the Departments of Commerce and Labor for initiatives expected at helping Florida and other states bracing for job losses connected with the end of the space shuttle program.

"This request would fund an initiative to develop a plan to encourage regional economic growth and job creation along the Florida Space Coast and other affected regions in furtherance of my Administration's bold new route for human space flight, which revitalizes NASA and transitions to new opportunities in the space industry and outside," Obama wrote House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a June 18 letter detail a number of changes to his 2011 budget request. A copy of the letter was obtain by Space News.

In April, Obama pledged $40 million to NASA's mainly Florida-based space shuttle work force transition to new jobs. He selected a task force led by NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke to choose how best to spend the money. Bolden told Congress in April that the $40 million would come from $1.9 billion NASA was request in 2011 to cover costs linked with terminating agency's Moon-focused Constellation program, a 5-year-old effort to replaces the space shuttle with new rockets and spacecraft optimized for lunar missions.

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