Alabama senator Jeff Sessions says "everything needs to be on the table" as Congress considers budgets


WASHINGTON -- "We had great years for Alabama in general," U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Mobile, said recently. "We're going to have to bear our share of the reductions."

That "deal with it" advice is not what Huntsville's defense and space communities want to hear, but it's what they expect as budget-cutting fever spreads in Washington. After all, if Republicans such as Sessions are willing to bring the pain, the pain is coming.

But Sessions tried to take some of the sting out of the adjustment ahead in a recent interview with The Times editorial board. Budgets shouldn't be "savaged," he said, even though "everything needs to be on the table."

Spending on NASA's next new mission, the heavy-lift rocket development project, should actually be increased, Sessions believes, and military spending should get a trim, not a buzz cut. That's what he'll advocate this year as a Senate Republican budget leader, Sessions said.

Sessions sees "a sustained battle over spending" in Washington as Congress fights first over outlays for the rest of the 2011 fiscal year ending in September and then spending for fiscal year 2012 beginning Oct. 1.

"Ultimately, I believe the will of the American people to reduce spending and bring spending under control will be achieved," Sessions said.

Sessions' theory of how that should happen mirrors the thinking of Alabama's entire congressional delegation. There are things that are Washington's rightful responsibility, this view goes, and there are things that are rightly the responsibility of state and local governments. It isn't hypocrisy, it's a philosophical position that lets the delegation advocate cutting spending and in the next breath try to protect defense and NASA. Those are two things only a national government can do, in their view, and it should do them.

Whether that attitude prevails or appears to other lawmakers like home cooking will determine how successful the delegation is in the budget fights ahead. Sessions is clearly trying to straddle the gap. He said he supports the thrust of deep House cuts in the 2011 budget and doesn't fear shutting the government down, if it comes to that, to enforce those cuts, as long as the process doesn't take a meat ax to NASA and defense.

"We're interested in the defense budget and how strongly it can be upheld," Sessions said. "The administration is assuming some significant savings on the (war) and it could be achieved, but some of that money is going to be needed to maintain our equipment that was damaged in the war effort ..."

Sessions said the Obama administration is "hostile to human spaceflight, it seems" because the administration continues to push government financial support for emerging commercial space launch companies. It's unproven technology, Sessions believes, and it's a dangerous turn away from the historical NASA rocket program that worked.

The American people want a NASA launch vehicle, Sessions said, "but almost without discussion the president submits a budget (last year) that hammers human spaceflight and the great core missions of NASA, resulting in a dangerous situation last fall.

"We dodged a bullet," Sessions said of the year-long fight between Congress and the administration, "and were able to restore authorization levels for the space launch system to do the 130-metric ton heavy lift (rocket)."

"We had money that should have been transitioned from shuttle into new programs," Sessions said. "That money is, apparently, going elsewhere. Some of it is going to atmospheric studies."

Atmospheric studies are one of the places Sessions says NASA's budget can be cut without sacrificing its key missions. Another is commercial space support.

Earth science - the umbrella term for NASA studies of Earth's climate, oceans and atmosphere - is a priority for the administration as it tries to make NASA more relevant to voters and lawmakers.

But conservatives fear it is also, to some extent, a closet effort to build the case for global warming. Point NASA more toward the stars, they say, and less toward Earth.