Press Releases :: March 15, 2007

NASA’s “Lean” Budgetary Outlook Will Have Wide-Ranging Impact on Agency Programs

(Washington, DC) The House Committee on Science and Technology today examined the budgetary outlook for our nation’s premier space agency – the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

A source of much concern since President Bush unveiled it in February, NASA’s budget plan has frustrated many lawmakers who call it inadequate in that it fails to provide the resources the agency needs to carry out all the tasks it has been given.

“You’ve always been straightforward with me and this Committee,” Chairman Bart Gordon (D-TN) told NASA Administrator Dr. Michael Griffin at today’s hearing. “I will say what I’ve said before – I’m afraid that NASA is headed for a train wreck if things don’t change. There are certain challenges that NASA is facing as a result of the FY07 Joint Resolution, but the agency’s budgetary problems run much deeper.”

Chairman Gordon pointed to a range of impacts on all of NASA’s programs due to the mismatch between resources and tasks in the FY08 budget plan, including:

• A continued failure by the Administration to seek the level of funding that they said NASA would need to carry out the exploration initiative and its other core activities.  In the three years since the President announced his exploration initiative, the White House has cut NASA’s five-year budget plan by a total of $2.26 billion.
• An estimated shortfall of $924 million in International Space Station (ISS) crew and cargo services funding – a shortfall that will have to be made up.
• Failure to include funds to address Space Shuttle program termination and retirement costs past FY 2010 – although NASA concedes there will be additional costs.
• No funding for the required upgrade of the aging Deep Space Network – though NASA says it will need to start funding it in FY 2009.
• A reduction in the amount of Space Shuttle reserves available to address remaining Shuttle program threats during the remaining missions.
• Almost no funding to initiate the series of new missions recommended by the National Academies’ Earth Science Decadal Survey.
• Deferring a significant amount of research due to be done on the ISS and providing no grounds for optimism that the research will be adequately funded prior to NASA’s planned withdrawal from the ISS program.
• An underfunding of NASA’s aeronautics program.
• Cuts to NASA’s long-term exploration technology program. (Elimination of NASA’s lunar robotic program – the precursor program for its human lunar initiative after just one mission has flown.)

“NASA has many challenges ahead of us, but we are on track and making progress in managing these challenges,” Dr. Griffin told Committee Members.

“I don’t fault you [Dr. Griffin] for attempting to prioritize within a hopelessly inadequate budget,” added Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee Chairman Mark Udall (D-CO). “But we in Congress have to step back and consider whether the Administration’s approach to the nation’s civil space and aeronautics R&D enterprise is credible and supported by the needed resources.”

“I think it’s clear we have a budgetary situation that bears little resemblance to the rosy projections offered by the Administration when the President announced his ‘Vision for Space Exploration’ three years ago – a vision that is now growing increasingly blurred,” concluded Chairman Gordon. “I will not kid you that it’s going to be easy to get the funding you are asking for in this year’s request, especially if the White House remains disengaged.”

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