Senate appropriators are working to advance a spending bill that would give significant boosts for weather and climate satellites at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, but leave some oceans and fisheries accounts dry.

The fiscal 2012 spending bill budgets $5 billion for NOAA -- $432 million more than the agency received in 2011 but still half a billion less than the Obama administration requested.

The NOAA accounts include significant new funding to launch new climate and weather monitoring satellites, but that bump-up would come at a cost to other NOAA accounts. NOAA's other programs will face administrative and overhead reductions, according to the committee.

The Commerce, Justice, Science Subcommittee yesterday cleared the fiscal 2012 spending measure, 15-1, without amendment. The full committee is slated to take it up this afternoon.

The measure funds the Commerce Department, Justice Department and other science agencies. Overall, the bill is $626 million below the 2011 level and $5 billion below the Obama budget request. With that "stringent budget environment," subcommittee Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) said that "nearly every activity ... is reduced below current amounts."

Two exceptions are NOAA's satellites and a separate prison program at the Justice Department, both of which presented "funding challenges critical to life and safety," according to Mikulski.

"These are not considered mandatory, but they are not truly discretionary either, so the subcommittee had an obligation to fund them," Mikulski said of the two accounts. "It required the subcommittee, for the first time that I have chaired the subcommittee, to eliminate programs."

Mikulski added: "We have gone beyond frugality, and we are in austerity."

The panel did not release the details of the cuts, but Mikulski said that "rather than a draconian across-the-board" cut to funding on all accounts, she preferred "small, targeted cuts."

The clamp-down came in response to funding limits required by the budget deal. Mikulski said she would be glad to restore funding for accounts in the bill if lawmakers could find new sources of funding.

"We didn't want to do this, this is the way the world was," Mikulski said.

The NOAA satellites are one area that would see a major increase, but even those accounts did not reach the administration's request level.

The bill allots $920 million for the Joint Polar Satellite System, $438 million more than fiscal 2011. The administration requested more than $1 billion to launch new satellites -- funding they said was critical to avoid a gap in the government's ability to provide advance warning for severe weather events.

The House Appropriations Committee budgeted $901 million for JPSS, roughly $170 million less than the administration had sought.

The Senate bill makes a 25 percent cut to agency funds for receptions and representation gear like T-shirts, hats and mugs. It also requires all agencies to cut overhead costs by at least 10 percent, reducing travel, rent and utility costs.