A careful review of the legislative maneuverings now underway in Washington, however, and an inside look at the space agency's political strategy, suggests the plan is still alive on Capitol Hill - although it probably is on life support.

The House Appropriations subcommittee on the Veterans Administration, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and independent agencies marked up their annual budget bill Tuesday. The legislators approved, within the subcommittee, specific funding elements of the administration's request.

For NASA, President Bush had sought $16.2 billion, an $866 million increase over the previous year. Much of the boost was targeted for the repairs to the space shuttle following the Columbia disaster, and activities to begin development of elements of Bush's new space policy.

The subcommittee, however, slashed more than $1 billion from the request, setting the NASA budget for fiscal year 2005 - which begins Oct. 1 - at $15.149 billion. That amount would not only eliminate the entire increase Bush had requested, but also reduce NASA's overall budget to some $229 million below the current year's amount.

As United Press International has been reporting, key legislators have expressed strong support for continuing space shuttle funding. The subcommittee approved the full $4.3 billion request for shuttle operations. But money for every new initiative contained within Bush's space plan was cut severely or rejected, as was any other program related to the plan.

For example, the subcommittee cut the proposed first-year funding for the new manned spaceship, called the crew exploration vehicle, by $436 million. If passed into law, the action would stop all work on the project in 2005.

Programs intended to begin at once to develop the technology for the manned moon and Mars missions - a mere $30 million request - was stripped from the bill. A $230 million project to develop a new atomic rocket and deep space power system, which was begun prior to the Bush proposals but folded into the effort - called Project Prometheus - likewise was killed.

The administration has been spending leftover funds from the canceled Space Launch Initiative on the agency's new exploration office. The subcommittee stripped $100 million from that account, making it harder for NASA to keep the exploration team operating even if funds for specific elements were cut. The subcommittee even killed the small, $20 million down payment on a new NASA project to offer prizes to achieve new space technologies and systems.

The subcommittee action Tuesday passed by voice vote, an indicator of strong across-the-board sentiment for cutting NASA, and for rearranging its spending priorities.

If the subcommittee's actions were the only indicator, Bush's space plan would seem to be dead on arrival in the House of Representatives. But other legislators are working to parry the opposition.

Rep. Tom Delay, R-Texas, the House Majority Leader, told reporters late Tuesday he would never permit an appropriations bill that cut out the president's space plan to reach a vote by the full House. Delay, in addition to controlling House Republicans, represents the congressional district that includes NASA's Johnson Space Center.

Following the subcommittee action, Rep. C. W. Bill Young, R-Fla., chair of the Appropriations Committee, said the plan was to bring the VA, HUD and IA bill to the House floor for a full vote soon after Congress returned from its summer vacation in early September. But Delay vowed to in effect kill the bill and the subcommittee's work by blocking it from floor action in the fall.

If Delay exacts his revenge, what would it do to NASA's fortunes? All spending bills not passed separately will most likely get folded into a Continuing Resolution that would be presented to Congress when it returns from the November elections. It means the level of NASA spending would have to be determined, requiring another fight over the agency's budget - this time in the Senate as well as the House.

For his part, NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe does not yet appear ready to wave the white flag.

The Committee is wrestling with some difficult public policy tradeoffs, and this is part of the process, O'Keefe told UPI. We're in a tough neighborhood, he added.

Senior administration sources told UPI that the House committee chairs met with NASA last week and warned that given the tight budget needs for the other agencies contained in the bill, NASA would, in effect, be held hostage. Even then, however, it is clear Delay would block anything that Young and subcommittee chair, Rep. James T. Walsh, R-N.Y., approved that would deeply cut the space plan.

The administration's strategy, sources said, is to gather its forces to do battle in the conference committee in November. The attempt would be to reconcile the differences between the House and Senate spending plans for the rest of FY 2005. Sources thus described yesterday's action as not a reflection of discontent with Bush's space policy, but rather as part of an overall negotiating strategy yet to play out.

The funding was clearly not what we were looking for, but neither was it the end of the road, said Brian Chase, Vice President for Washington Operations of the Space Foundation, an organization in Colorado Springs, Colo., that supports Bush's plan. This is part of a complex process that will play out through the fall, Chase predicted.

It was an opening move, one source said, calling the subcommittee vote a sort of a congressional game of chicken.

O'Keefe, meanwhile, still has one card to play if all else fails - that would be to call for help from the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

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