Bipartisan bill encourages partnerships between federal agencies to remove burdens critical to promoting space and engineering research
WASHINGTON – Arizona senior Senator Kyrsten Sinema, Chair of the Space and Science Subcommittee, introduced the NASA Streamlining Partnerships for Research and Education for Engineering and Science (SPREES) Act alongside Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Congressmen Eric Sorensen (D-Ill.) and Brian Babin (R-Texas).
The bipartisan, bicameral bill removes bureaucratic barriers to encourage partnerships between federal agencies that strengthen research for engineering and science. Specifically, the NASA SPREES Act authorizes NASA to receive, spend, and transfer funds or use other department or agency facilities for scientific and engineering research or education.
“We’re cutting red tape to streamline partnerships between agencies that will propel Arizona’s and America’s leadership in space and science research and innovation,” said Sinema, Chair of the Space and Science Subcommittee.
Currently, principal investigators, faculty, and students need to submit different applications to allow joint interagency funding of grants, fellowships, or cooperative agreements. The applications often have different requirements, and with differently calibrated budgets, to multiple agencies – requiring applicants to write, submit, and manage multiple applications for multiple agencies.
Sinema’s NASA SPREES Act streamlines this process and eliminates bureaucratic burdens by adding a new subsection to the National Aeronautics and Space Act authorizing NASA to receive and spend funds, transfer funds, or use facilities made available by any other department or agency for scientific and engineering research or education – as long as the head of the department or agency providing the funds approves the transfer and the funds are used in a way that is consistent with their original purposes.
As Chair of the Space and Science Subcommittee, Sinema has introduced multiple pieces of bipartisan legislation to strengthen space research, safety, and exploration – including the LAUNCH Act and the SPACE Leadership Act – in recent months.