WASHINGTON — A Senate committee is set to advance nominations for NASA’s chief financial officer and inspector general.
The Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing Nov. 10 to consider nominations for several posts, including that of Joshua Shoemaker to be NASA’s chief financial officer and Robert Steinau to be inspector general. Those are two of the four positions at the agency that require Senate confirmation; the others are administrator and deputy administrator.
Neither nominee received many questions during the hearing, which lasted a little more than an hour. Senators largely focused their attention on the nomination of Danielle Thumann to be a member of the Federal Communications Commission.
Shoemaker is an accountant who has worked for more than 20 years in the private sector and in the Mississippi state government. Since August, he has been a senior adviser in NASA’s Mission Support Directorate, and before that was controller for the Republican National Committee.
Steinau has worked since 2009 at NASA’s Office of Inspector General, and since December 2024 has served as the office’s senior official in the absence of a Senate-confirmed inspector general. He previously worked for the Department of Energy’s Office of Inspector General and for the U.S. Secret Service.
Shoemaker, in his opening statement at the nomination hearing, said he would focus on financial accountability, improved visibility into financial performance of NASA programs, transparency with Congress on that performance and modernization of NASA financial systems.
“I believe the CFO has an important responsibility to give the administrator, NASA leadership and Congress an honest and timely picture of the agency’s financial position,” he said. He added that means how programs are performing against their planned budgets and schedules as well as ensuring effective management of resources.
He deferred questions on specific programs as well as on the proposed U.S. Space Academy that a presidential commission, led by NASA, is studying. Shoemaker said that decisions on locating the academy will ultimately be made by the president.
Steinau said that, as inspector general, he would focus on three critical challenges for NASA: returning humans to the moon, transitioning from the International Space Station to commercial stations and cybersecurity.
“NASA is moving with urgency, and it is imperative that accountability keep pace with ambition,” he said.
The Senate Commerce Committee announced Nov. 11 that it will meet Nov. 18 to vote on the nominees at the Nov. 10 hearing, sending them, if approved, to the full Senate for a confirmation vote.
NASA has been without a Senate-confirmed chief financial officer since the start of the Trump administration in January 2025. The White House nominated Greg Autry for that position in the spring of 2025, but the nomination was returned by the Senate without acting on it at the end of the year. NASA has lacked a Senate-confirmed inspector general since the departure of Paul Martin in late 2023.
