Dear Chairpersons Mikulski and Mollohan:

The International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA’s) largest federal employee Union, greatly appreciates your leadership in carefully crafting NASA’s fiscal year 2010 (FY10) Appropriations and diligently shepherding them through the House and Senate. Within the constraint of the President’s proposed top line of $18.686 billion, in order to reconcile the House and Senate bills, IFPTE recommends the following funding be provided as two-year appropriations to NASA’s major accounts:

. $4,533 million for Science,
. $3,926.4 million for Exploration with $457.7 million for Advanced Capabilities,
. $507 million for Aeronautics Research,
. $6,157.9 million for Space Operations,
. $126.1 million for Education,
. $3,400.6 million for Cross-Agency Support (CAS),
. $35 million for the Inspector General.

The above levels (and the attached details regarding sub-accounts) assume the current account structure. However, we appreciate the House bill’s effort to fully fund Administrative labor within the CAS account and to provide transparency by consolidating Construction of Facility funds within a single account. IFPTE also greatly applauds the Senate report’s recognition that NASA’s current practice of full-cost recovery of technical labor is deeply flawed; we look forward to strong language in the Conference report that reaffirms the need to sequester all technical civil-servant labor in NASA’s FY11 budget formulation in order to return proper control of these funds to line management and to save tens of millions of dollars as well. Lastly, IFPTE thanks both the House and Senate for their continued bipartisan recognition that any reduction-in-force would harm NASA.

In anticipation of the FY11 budget, IFPTE strongly advocates that NASA be provided with the additional $3 billion determined by the Augustine Committee to be necessary if NASA is to maintain a vigorous Human Space Exploration program. While we acknowledge the harsh reality of an increasingly austere fiscal horizon, we believe this modest investment is critical for maintaining America’s aerospace competitive edge and look forward to working with you to garner support for a major funding increase next year.

Sincerely,

Gregory J. Junemann,
President

For more information see: http://www.ifpte.org/Downloads/Archives/Press%20Releases/2009/IFPTE_FY10_Conference_wattach.pdf