Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz (R-TX) slipped into the Senate version of the Big Beautiful Bill funding for NASA and other priorities that run counter to President Donald Trump’s proposed budget.
Cruz in early June released the Commerce Committee portion for the text of the Big Beautiful Bill. Among these priorities is $9.9 billion in additional funding in the current year for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
The $10 billion package would spend $4.1 billion on the production of the Space Launch System (SLS) rockets for the Artemis 4 and 5 missions. NASA’s fiscal year 2026 budget proposal would end SLS development, along with the Orion spacecraft, with Artemis 3. The proposal would also provide $250 million in additional funding for the International Space Station through fiscal year 2029.
The Cruz portion of the budget appeared to ruffle some feathers.
Michael Mealling, a Space Frontier advocate, said, “For everyone upset about the cut to NASA’s science budgets, Ted Cruz is selling ~$100B of spectrum and decided to take $10b out to fund two more Artemis missions beyond Artemis III. Flights no one wants. That money could have gone to keeping NASA’s science budget intact.”
This budget proposal appears to contradict the goals of the Trump administration’s fiscal year 2026 budget proposal, which sought an $18.8 billion cut from the roughly $24.9 billion it received in fiscal year 2025.
The Trump White House seeks to reduce funding for lower-priority research and “terminate unaffordable missions such as the Mars Sample Return mission that is grossly overbudget and whose goals would be achieved by human missions to Mars.”
The Trump budget also reduces funding for Legacy Human Exploration Systems, believing that these “grossly expensive and delayed Space Launch System [SLS]” should be phased out. It also proposes to scrap the Lunar Gateway, which the Cruz proposal funds:
The Budget phases out the grossly expensive and delayed Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion capsule after three flights. SLS alone costs $4 billion per launch and is 140 percent over budget. The Budget funds a program to replace SLS and Orion flights to the Moon with more cost- Legacy Human Exploration Systems -879 effective commercial systems that would support more ambitious subsequent lunar missions. The Budget also proposes to terminate the Gateway, a small lunar space station in development with international partners, which would have been used to support future SLS and Orion missions.
The White House budget also would streamline the NASA Center operations, saying, “The Budget refocuses NASA on beating China back to the Moon and putting the first human on Mars. To achieve these objectives, it would streamline the workforce, IT services, NASA Center operations, facility maintenance, and construction and environmental compliance activities.”
Sen. Cruz has yet to respond to a request for comment.
Sean Moran is a policy reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on X @SeanMoran3.
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