by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
Washington : NASA’s will get $20.7 billion — $1.1 billion more than 2017 funding and $1.6 billion above the White House request — under a spending bill that cleared Congress this week and was signed by President Trump on Friday.
A big beneficiary will be the planned rocket to take astronauts into deep space and onto Mars, the Space Launch System (SLS), which will get $2.15 billion, and the Orion crew capsule, which will launch on top of the SLS, will get $1.35 billion, AL.com reported.
According to a report spaceflightnow.com, the NASA funding was part of a $1.3 trillion federal spending package that keeps the government running through the end of fiscal year 2018 — September 30 — after multiple stopgap budgets in recent months.
The budget provides $350 million for construction of a second SLS mobile launch platform, a project which, NASA believes, could shorten the gap between the first and second Space Launch System flights.
Funding for a second SLS launch platform was not included in the White House’s fiscal year 2019 budget proposal.
Robert Lightfoot, NASA’s outgoing acting administrator set to retire at the end of April, told a House subcommittee on March 7 that there was insufficient money in the agency’s budget to build a second SLS platform without delaying or canceling other projects.
While responding to a question during the hearing, Lightfoot said that a second SLS mobile launch platform would be better for the program in an “ideal world.”
“I could fly humans quicker, probably in the 2022 timeframe,” with a second mobile launch platform, Lightfoot said.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
Washington : The White House expressed its support for a short-term spending bill proposed by House Republicans, in a bid to avoid a government shutdown by Friday if the US Congress fail to pass a funding bill for the federal government.
“We do support the short-term C.R.. However, it’s not our first choice,” said White House spokesperson Sarah Sanders.
As a stop-gap measure, the proposed short-term spending bill will fund the US federal government through February 16. It includes a six-year reauthorisation of the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which Democrats have demanded, Xinhua reported.
The federal government is running on its third temporary spending bill since the fiscal year of 2018, which began on October 1, 2017 and is set to expire on January 19.
“We’d still like to see a clean funding bill, a two-year budget deal,” said Sanders.
US Congress is now discussing a two-year budget deal. However, there still is large gap between Republicans and Democrats over immigration.
Democrats said they won’t support any spending bill that does not include protections for young people who were brought to the US illegally as children and will lose their protected status in March. While Conservative Republicans supported legislation that would cut government spending except for defense.
“The president certainly doesn’t want a shutdown. And if one happens, I think you only have one place to look, and that’s to the Democrats, who are holding our military and our national security hostage by trying to push through other policies that have nothing to do with the budget,” Sanders said.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Barack Obama wave to the media before their talks at the Hyderabad House in New Delhi. (File Photo Maeeshat)
Washington:(IANS) The White House has again warned that if the Republican controlled congress unilaterally kills the Iran nuclear deal it would greatly damage America’s standing as it would lose the backing of countries like India.
Indian leaders had agreed to curtail the import of oil from Iran making an “economic sacrifice” and backed the sanctions against Tehran to advance US effort to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon through diplomacy, Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters Friday.
“In essence …countries like India had agreed that they would take these steps, even at their own expense, to try to reach this broader international agreement,” he said.
“And the good news is that that agreement has been reached. And it is an agreement that is supported by the international community — 99 percent of the world as the President (Barack Obama) has described it,” Earnest said.
“And that’s why it would be so damaging to the standing of the United States for the United States Congress to act unilaterally to kill this deal,” he said.
“No longer would countries like India, who have been making a substantial sacrifice over the years, have any interest or incentive to continue to enforce those sanctions against Iran,” Earnest said.
“There is no basis, there is no credible claim for why they would be willing to do that,” he said.
“And there is no denying the significant negative impact on United States credibility for the United States to be isolated in this way.”
“That’s why the President has said if Congress were to move forward to kill this deal or kill this agreement, it would, in fact, yield a better deal for Iran,” Earnest said.
“Because what we would see is that Iran would get sanctions relief; they would have the ability to sell oil to India and get the proceeds of doing so…without having to submit to the most intrusive set of inspections that have ever been imposed on a country’s nuclear programme,” he said.
“That’s why I’ve long said that the case before Congress is that Iran is going to get sanctions relief,” Earnest said.
“The question is whether or not the United States and the international community is going to get anything for it.”
“And that is ultimately the choice before members of Congress right now,” he said.
Earnest recalled that when the sanctions were originally put in place US officials traveled around the world “including to India, sat down with the Indian government and asked them to curtail the amount of Iranian oil that they imported into the country.”
“And we acknowledged in the context of those discussions that this would be an economic sacrifice that the people of India and that the economy of India would have to make,” he said.
“But Indian leaders agreed to it by saying that this is something that they were willing to do if they can advance our effort to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon through diplomacy,” Earnest said.
In response to another question, Earnest said that he was not aware of any planned visits by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the White House in conjunction with his travel to the United States for the UN General Assembly next month.
(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)
