At 10:15 AM, the House Appropriations Committee will meet to discuss The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Budget Request for Fiscal Year 2020, an aggressively uninspired document that fundamentally dismantles America’s premier ocean and climate research agency and will cause immeasurable destruction to out coastal communities and economies.
You can watch the hearing live, here: https://appropriations.house.gov/legislation/hearings/the-national-oceanic-and-atmospheric-administration-s-budget-request-for-fiscal
Curiously, Commerce has not released the Blue Book, a guiding document that outlines the specifics of how the new budget will impact each program within NOAA. To my knowledge, this is the first time these hearings have commenced without these guiding documents, making it impossible for the American people to understand what, exactly, is at stake if Secretary Ross pushes his anti-science and anti-ocean budget through.
We’ll be watching.