https://spacenews.com/nasa-leasing-bill-transformed-into-voting-rights-legislation/
Short version
>Democrats gut a NASA bill to try and bypass congressional rules and backdoor in a voting regulation bill being filibustered in the Senate.
Long version:
>In recent years NASA has been leasing some of its underutilized facilities to other government agencies and educational institutions (old administrative spaces, empty hangers and warehouses, outdated lab spaces, etc.), as a way of maintaining disused assets while at the same time reducing overhead. It's been moderately successful so far - they're averaging an annual revenue of $11 million leasing several dozen sites and using that revenue to fund upgrades and maintenance of the facilities that are actually in-use. They've started doing this with a lot of government assets over the last decade to cut operating costs.
>The law governing NASA's ability to lease these properties expired late last year and there has been an effort in Congress to renew it. A bill passed the House and Senate space subcommittees (there were a few amendments, the debate seemed to be largely over whether to grant a short extension until something more long-term could be written or to just extend the existing guidelines for several years). However in-between being approved by the Senate subcommittee and being voted on by the House, Democrats decided to completely gut all language related to NASA or the space program out of the bill and replace it with a duplicate of the voting regulations bill currently being filibustered in the Senate. The amended bill narrowly passed along party lines - Reps fuming that the Dems gutted a bipartison bill with unanimous support to try and bypass the rules and backdoor in a law that was already submitted and blocked, Dems saying it's a small price to pay for 'saving democracy'.
Short version
>Democrats gut a NASA bill to try and bypass congressional rules and backdoor in a voting regulation bill being filibustered in the Senate.
Long version:
>In recent years NASA has been leasing some of its underutilized facilities to other government agencies and educational institutions (old administrative spaces, empty hangers and warehouses, outdated lab spaces, etc.), as a way of maintaining disused assets while at the same time reducing overhead. It's been moderately successful so far - they're averaging an annual revenue of $11 million leasing several dozen sites and using that revenue to fund upgrades and maintenance of the facilities that are actually in-use. They've started doing this with a lot of government assets over the last decade to cut operating costs.
>The law governing NASA's ability to lease these properties expired late last year and there has been an effort in Congress to renew it. A bill passed the House and Senate space subcommittees (there were a few amendments, the debate seemed to be largely over whether to grant a short extension until something more long-term could be written or to just extend the existing guidelines for several years). However in-between being approved by the Senate subcommittee and being voted on by the House, Democrats decided to completely gut all language related to NASA or the space program out of the bill and replace it with a duplicate of the voting regulations bill currently being filibustered in the Senate. The amended bill narrowly passed along party lines - Reps fuming that the Dems gutted a bipartison bill with unanimous support to try and bypass the rules and backdoor in a law that was already submitted and blocked, Dems saying it's a small price to pay for 'saving democracy'.