Space Policy Online By Marcia Smith | Posted: July 3, 2025
The House passed President Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill” this afternoon. Trump is expected to sign it tomorrow, July 4, a self-imposed deadline Republicans were determined to meet. Dubbed the “megabill” for its far reaching effects on federal spending and revenue, the reconciliation bill (its more common name) includes $10 billion for NASA programs the Trump Administration has proposed cutting in the FY2026 budget request. They include elements of the Artemis program, funding for the International Space Station, as well as $85 million to move the Space Shuttle Discovery from the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum to Texas.
Over the past week, first the Senate and then the House pulled all-nighters to get the reconciliation bill passed by July 4 giving up most of their week-long July 4 recess that was supposed to begin last Friday, June 27.
Early on Congress was debating whether to deal with Trump’s broad domestic policy agenda all at once or in separate bills and at one point he said he wanted one, big beautiful bill and that became the legislation’s official name: the “One, Big Beautiful Bill Act,” OBBB, and assigned the number H.R. 1.
In the end, despite publicly-expressed misgivings from a number of Republicans, all but three in the Senate and two in the House voted for it. The Senate vote was 50-50, with Vice President Vance casting the tie-breaker to make it 51-50. Of the 53 Senate Republicans, 50 voted yes. Three voted no along with all Democrats and two independents.
Quite a few House Republicans bitterly complained about changes the Senate made to the House-passed bill and initially vowed not to approve it, but the vote in the House this afternoon was 218-214, with all but two Republicans in favor. All Democrats were opposed. No changes were made to the Senate-passed version.
The original House-passed version of the bill did not address NASA.
The Senate version included sections crafted by the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, which is chaired by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). The final version of the Commerce Committee’s text included everything for NASA that was in the original version plus $85 million to transfer the Space Shuttle Discovery from the Udvar-Hazy Center of the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum in Chantilly, VA to Houston. The language in the bill is less specific, but Cruz and Texas’s other Senator, John Cornyn (R), already have introduced legislation that makes clear what they intend.
As passed by the Senate and House, the bill provides $10.08 billion ($9.995 billion in the original version plus another $85 million in the revised version) for NASA as follows.
More:
https://spacepolicyonline.com/news/trump-megabill-includes-billions-for-artemis-iss-moving-a-space-shuttle-to-texas-and-more/
