"JPL Funding Champs United"

Pasadena Star News/San Gabriel Valley Tribune Editorial
August 3, 2001

OF course we'd rather see our area lawmakers of both major parties getting along rather than the reverse. They're elected to represent us and the interests of the San Gabriel Valley, not to bicker or to be any more merely partisan than they need to be.

At the same time, there are differences of politics and personality in the diverse group of folks we send to Sacramento and to Washington, D.C. that make it impossible for a perpetual love-fest to go on among them. Local voters consistently choose people from an amazingly broad spectrum of beliefs, and that's reflected in what they do in office.

But we were pleased last week to see two of our House members of different parties -- longtime Rep. David Dreier, a conservative Republican from Covina, and freshman Rep. Adam Schiff, a moderate Democrat representing Pasadena -- working in concert to protect funding for the extraordinarily important, ambitious work of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The La Canada Flintridge lab, operated by Caltech for NASA, is one of the largest employers in the Valley, with over 5,000 workers. From the mid-1950s to today, it has been far and away the premier organization in the world for exploring our solar system.

From the Explorer mission that put our country in space to this week's Genesis launch that will literally bring back to Earth flotsam blowing in the solar wind, the people of JPL have shown they have no peers in getting to know our corner of the universe. This isn't mere sightseeing; it is work that provides the answers to questions that are as old as mankind, and that continues the values of the curious adventurers who have made the modern world.

But Dreier and Schiff have found the JPL budget under attack in Congress' budget process. While the House version of an appropriations bill continues normal, prudent funding for JPL's missions, a Senate version slashes $50 million -- not in an effort to save taxpayers money during tough economic times, but in an effort to steal programs away for other regions of the country.

The Senate budget would gut key JPL programs, shuffling operations elsewhere for missions from Europa to Mars Global Surveyor to Galileo. One of the perpetrators is Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Maryland, who has long tried to pilfer JPL work away for a NASA facility in her state. The Senate budget would also spin some JPL programs off to a variety of outside contractors.

Parochialism aside, the grab makes no sense. JPL is where the interplanetary expertise is and has always been.

Parochialism very much not aside, the move could cost up to 1,200 jobs locally.

The rubber hits the road after the August congressional recess when the House and Senate send representatives to a joint Conference Committee to work out budgetary differences. With the heated lobbying of two of Congress' brightest members in Dave Dreier and Adam Schiff, we trust JPL will find its funding restored.