The House Appropriations Committee is largely granting the Obama administration's fiscal 2013 funding request for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration -- including expensive weather satellites -- in its Commerce, Justice and Science spending bill released this morning.

The overall Commerce, Justice and Science (CJS) budget would total $51.1 billion -- fairly close to the Senate's $51.9 billion proposal (E&E Daily, April 18). The total represents a $1.6 billion decrease from fiscal 2012 enacted levels and a $731 million cut from the administration's request.

The committee sliced $93 million from NOAA's request, reducing it to an even $5 billion. But noting the importance of weather satellites for forecasts and lifesaving storm warnings, appropriators fully funded the $916 million requested for the Joint Polar Satellite System.

The House Appropriations CJS Subcommittee will mark up the bill tomorrow.

Many lawmakers on Capitol Hill have expressed concern over NOAA's proposal to spend so much on satellites, while dramatically cutting other fisheries programs to stay at a relatively flat budget.

"NOAA's 'tough choices' have resulted in placing nearly all of its eggs in a single basket: satellite systems fraught with a long history of major problems," Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), chairman of the Science Committee's Energy and Environment subpanel, said at a hearing last month.

Senate appropriators have similar concerns, but decided to do something "really bold and somewhat controversial" about it, in the words of Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), the chairwoman of the CJS Appropriations Subcommittee. Yesterday, that subcommittee announced it was proposing to strip funding for weather and climate satellites from NOAA and transfer it to NASA (ClimateWire, April 17).

"We've been very concerned that NOAA and the Department of Commerce have shown little will to rein in costs," Mikulski said during the markup of the Senate CJS budget bill yesterday.

She and other committee members said they have more faith in NASA to get the weather satellites up and running in a cost-efficient and timely way. However, NOAA would still operate the satellites once they are in space and manage the data, which is what the agency does best, Mikulski said.