Jim Muncy has distributed an email explaining that the COTS rescission language in the House appropriations bill for NASA is not really a cut, but just brings COTS funding to the value that NASA had intended to spend on it anyway for 2010. Jeff Foust has posted the essential details: An explanation for that COTS “rescission” - Space Politics.

So something of a false alarm although it's still odd the way the item is written. The cliche comparison of legislation writing to sausage making is certainly a good one. However, it seems that with Congress most of the sausage is getting made out of sight in a giant cellar beneath the factory where staff members do the real work. Ingredients seem to appear and disappear magically to outside observers and it seems sometimes even to Congresspersons.