House Science Committee praises Artemis 2, presses NASA on proposed 23% budget cut

Chairman Brian Babin opened the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee hearing by praising Artemis 2 and framing the session as a review of the President's fiscal year 2027 budget request for NASA. He told the committee the White House's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) had proposed roughly $18.8 billion for NASA, which he described as about a 23 percent cut from appropriated FY2026 levels.

Administrator Jared Isaacman, the agency's newly confirmed head, thanked the panel, congratulated the Artemis 2 crew and the NASA workforce, and said the FY2027 request concentrates resources on a narrower set of ‘‘needle-moving’’ objectives: returning astronauts to the lunar surface, building initial surface infrastructure, increasing launch cadence, and prioritizing a set of flagship science missions such as the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope and Dragonfly. Isaacman also highlighted long-standing program execution problems, citing GAO figures and examples of cost growth on high-profile programs.

Committee members on both sides of the aisle repeatedly voiced concern that the proposed reductions to wide swaths of science, aeronautics and technology programs—often characterized in questions as near 23% agency-wide and described in members' remarks as proposals that would reduce certain mission directorate budgets by roughly half—would undermine capabilities for Earth science, aeronautics research, and STEM pipelines. Ranking Member Lofrren and others cited a Democratic staff report and an email from the Electrified Powertrain Flight Demonstration (EPFD) project manager that indicated some programs had been placed on an orderly shutdown schedule after a prior administration budget pass; she urged the administrator to commit to following Congressional appropriations and to avoid implementing PBR-level cuts before Congress acts.

Isaacman replied that NASA will ‘‘always follow the law’’ and pledged to overcommunicate with the committee. He described the agency's recent internal review and said many reductions in the PBR target missions still in formulation or programs the agency views as lower priority relative to flagship objectives. He emphasized that NASA also plans to work with commercial providers where feasible to preserve data continuity (for example, by using commercial constellations for some Earth observations) while directing scarce civil funds to capabilities that "no one else in the world" can provide.

The hearing left unresolved questions about which specific programs would be canceled or restructured in FY2027, but the tenor of the exchange made clear that Members expect detailed lists, mission‑by‑mission justification, and firm commitments that NASA will not short-circuit the appropriations process. Chair Babin said he and other members do not expect to allow sweeping reductions to become de facto policy without close oversight.