Good morning and happy Friday. This was a busy week on the Hill, especially after the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion about Roe v. Wade on Monday (more on that in a minute). But Congress also tackled some issues you may not have heard as much about.
New Era For Space Contractors?
After more than a decade of bloated budgets, setbacks, and tardiness in creating the Space Launch System (SLS), lawmakers seem to be losing some of their patience with contractors involved in space exploration projects. Even NASA Administrator Bill Nelson—an architect of the SLS program—is using choice words.
At a Senate hearing this week, Nelson signaled the space agency wants to design its contracts to encourage timeliness and competition going forward, as NASA seeks to return humans to the moon this decade. Nelson told senators NASA’s use of cost-plus contracts, which give more flexibility to companies, has been “a plague on us in the past.”
Moving to a fixed-price system for development of key Artemis mission systems, including the human landing system, “can bring us all the value of competition,” Nelson told senators.
“You get it done with that competitive spirit. You get it done cheaper,” he said.
A fixed-price award ties payment to the accomplishment of certain goals. Cost-plus contracts, meanwhile, compensate companies and pay them an additional fee for their work, regardless of whether they meet expectations by delivering a product on schedule or according to budget. Eric Berger at Ars Technica has a piece on Nelson’s remarks this week here, and he wrote a helpful article about cost-plus contracts a while back, here.
Nelson’s words were unexpected, to say the least. He was one of the most ardent proponents of the SLS project when he was a senator. In the time since it was created, critics have acerbically described the Space Launch System as the “Senate Launch System” for its priority of creating jobs around the country, often at the expense of efficiency.
Nelson’s appearance this week doesn’t mean lawmakers are going to simply give up on pet projects and directing jobs to their districts. But they do signal contractors could face higher expectations from NASA in the coming years. His remarks also underscore that it is getting more difficult to defend a system that doesn’t always produce results, especially in the face of SpaceX’s successes as a commercial space provider.
But Nelson’s comments were just the latest sign of NASA’s frustration with contractors.
In March, NASA Inspector General Paul Martin told members of the House that NASA had seen poor contractor performance in delivering SLS components. Martin specifically pointed to Boeing as underperforming, and he blamed cost-plus contracts. That kind of deal, Martin said, has worked to the benefit of companies and not to the space agency’s advantage.
Shortly after the hearing Martin testified at, we published a Q&A with Rep. Don Beyer, who chairs the House subcommittee on space. In that conversation, Beyer said the NASA inspector general “made a really good point” about the way contracts are formulated. Beyer noted that he has several top space contractors in his Virginia district, but that didn’t stop him from criticizing the motives at play.
“If the incentive is to win the contract again next year and keep moving forward little by little by little, in cost-plus there’s no profit incentive,” Beyer told The Dispatch. “Which is why you’ve seen dramatically different results from SpaceX, and even Orbital and some of the others that really had to run first as small businesses and then as businesses that were maximizing profit.”
“And frankly, if you’re the contractor, you know, they like programs that last forever,” he added.
Important Move For Uyghurs Could Come Soon
The Biden administration is reportedly eyeing a response to the Chinese government’s genocide in Xinjiang that would meaningfully punish a company believed to be supplying Chinese concentration camps with surveillance technology.
The Financial Times’ Demetri Sevastopulo reported this week that the White House is considering imposing stringent sanctions on Hikvision, a leading manufacturer of surveillance technology. Many countries and companies would be at risk of violating those sanctions because of dealings with the company. Sevastopulo writes that the Biden administration has “started briefing allies on its intentions because any measures would have ramifications for the more than 180 countries that use the company’s cameras.”
Human rights advocates praised the development, urging the White House to follow through.
“If enacted, these sanctions are a seismic development,” Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch, told the Financial Times. “We have long called for surveillance technologies to be regulated so that they aren’t deployed by abusive governments. Our research shows that Beijing’s tech-enhanced repression extends both inside and outside China.”
Hikvision has been implicated in the genocide for a while, both inside the camps and in the surrounding region. Fueled by surveillance technology, Xinjiang is an oppressive police state where every move is watched. Most recently, Ovalbek Turdakun, an ethnic Kyrgyz man who spent nearly a year detained in a concentration camp in Xinjiang, identified the Hikvision logo as the company behind omnipresent surveillance cameras within the camp. Turdakun recently made it to the United States after advocacy on his behalf from human rights leaders and lawmakers, and he has shared harrowing details of his time in detainment.
Lawmakers involved in human rights issues have been critical of Hikvision for years, calling for actions against it and other Chinese technology companies.
Uyghur advocates had an opportunity this week to urge action on behalf of their imprisoned family members directly to President Joe Biden. At an Eid-al-Fitr reception, Ziba Murat, the daughter of a detained Uyghur, spoke with the president and first lady Jill Biden about her mother’s case. Her mother, Dr. Gulshan Abbas, disappeared in 2018 and was later confirmed to have been arrested by Chinese authorities.
“During my personal encounter with the President, he was empathetic towards me,” Murat wrote. “I also told the first lady about my mother’s situation and I was emotionally affected by how she had reacted to my mother’s case. My mother would help the weak, and care for them, and now it’s been almost 4 years she has been incarcerated in prison. She is innocent. I’m sad but hopeful, I will not stop fighting for her release; my voice will be louder and stronger.”
The White House has not officially announced sanctions on Hikvision. Secretary of State Antony Blinken had been scheduled to deliver a speech on the administration’s China policy this week, but he tested positive for coronavirus. He is expected to deliver the speech in the coming days.
Democrats Moving Ahead With Abortion Vote
Senate Democrats will bring forward a bill codifying abortion rights next week—but a similar bill failed earlier this year, and the math hasn’t changed since then.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters Thursday that a vote to advance the legislation will likely happen next Wednesday.
“Next week’s vote will be one of the most important we take, not only this session, but in this century,” Schumer said. “This is not an abstract exercise. This is real. This is urgent as it gets.”
It comes after a leaked draft opinion this week indicated the Supreme Court may soon overturn Roe v. Wade.
Schumer rejected the idea of limiting the scope of the legislation to win support from pro-abortion rights GOP Sens. Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski. The two senators voted against an effort to advance the measure in February. They have introduced their own bill to codify Roe, but it does not target state laws like the Democratic bill would.
“We’re not cutting back,” Schumer said of the Collins and Murkowski bill. “We’re not compromising.”
My former Weekly Standard colleague John McCormack has done a lot of insightful reporting on abortion legislation over the past week (and since the bill was first introduced). He wrote a piece on Wednesday outlining why the Democrats’ abortion bill is so radical—he writes that it creates a right to abortion through all nine months of pregnancy and would strike down almost all state laws on abortion, such as parental consent and notification laws. Read his full article here.
Pelosi Sets Minimum Staff Pay
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi took steps Friday morning to make sure the 21 percent increase lawmakers received for office expenses this year will actually go toward boosting salaries for congressional staff.
She announced in a letter to House members that she is setting minimum annual pay for House staff at $45,000 with a September 1 deadline to implement the new minimum.
“With a competitive minimum salary, the House will better be able to retain and recruit excellent, diverse talent,” Pelosi wrote. “Doing so will open the doors to public service for those who may not have been able to afford to do so in the past. This is also an issue of fairness, as many of the youngest staffers working the longest hours often earn the lowest salaries.”
The move will help many Hill staffers who have not been making much while living in an expensive city and amid high inflation. A Roll Call review of staff pay data showed that in 2020, about 13 percent of congressional staff made less than $42,610.
Pelosi said she would also further increase the House’s maximum yearly salary to $203,700, matching the Senate side’s top salary for staff. She announced the House is also scheduled to vote on a measure next week allowing House staff to unionize.
“Congressional staffers deserve the same fundamental rights and protections as workers all across the country, including the right to bargain collectively,” Pelosi said.
Read more about the unionizing legislation here.
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