Providing For Consideration Of H.R. 3093, Commerce, Justice, Science, And Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2008

Floor Speech

PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF H.R. 3093, COMMERCE, JUSTICE, SCIENCE, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2008 -- (House of Representatives - July 25, 2007)

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Mr. McCAUL of Texas. Mr. Speaker, first I'd like to say, as a former Justice Department official who worked on national security, wiretaps or FISAs, I can think of no more important issues facing this country and this Congress than the modernization of the FISA statute. And I hope and I plead with my colleagues to support this measure.

I rise today to bring to the House's attention an issue dealing with changes to NASA's account structure required by H.R. 3093 and the challenges this provision will impose on NASA.

Title III of this bill increases the number of appropriations accounts that fund NASA from three to seven, and it requires conversion to this new structure in fiscal year 2008. Implementing this change will impose a tremendous burden on NASA's accounting system, at an unknown cost, and it's unclear what the net advantage of such a structural change, what that would be.

The current structure with three accounts coupled with customary congressional direction contained in the committee report language provides the agency unambiguous guidance regarding spending levels of the program, project, and in some cases at the activity level.

Since 2001, NASA has been implementing a new software package to standardize its accounting and financial software across all 11 of its centers, and at the same time NASA has been putting in place a new means of allocating overhead costs. These efforts have not yet been completed, and to now direct the agency to reformat its basic accounting system is especially burdensome and complex. It may also force the agency to reevaluate the manner in which it calculates overhead rates.

In a letter addressed to the House Appropriations leadership last month on the account structure change, NASA Administrator Mike Griffin stated that ``it would have a severe and extensive impact upon NASA's financial system'' and ``would make maintaining NASA's ability to execute in full cost exceedingly complex.''

H.R. 3093 also directs NASA to implement the account structure change in 2008, a task that NASA says it simply cannot do in the time permitted.

So I strongly urge the committee leadership to reflect carefully on the concerns raised by Administrator Griffin and to work with NASA in the weeks ahead to reach an agreement on a budget structure that allows for greater transparency without undermining NASA's current accounting system.

I would like to thank the chairman and ranking member of the Appropriations Committee for their hard work and for the resources provided to NASA in this bill.

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