House Representatives Working On NASA Reform Bill

MarkWhittington writes with good and bad news about NASA's future budgets. From the article: "Rep. John Culberson, along with Rep. Frank Wolf, are developing a bill that will attempt to rationalize NASA's budget process and provide some long term continuity in its administration. First, a NASA administrator would be named to a ten year term. The intent is to provide some continuity in the way the space agency is run and to remove it, as much as possible, from the vagaries of politics. Second, NASA funding would be placed on a multi-year rather than annual cycle. This is of particular importance to the space agency because the majority of its high level projects take several years to run their course. If funding were fixed for a number of years, the theory goes, money could be spent more efficiently. NASA planners would know how much they have to spend four or so years going forward and would not have to worry about being cut off at the knees by Congressional appropriators year after year." But is it more than political grandstanding in an election year? There might be a few problems: NASA could get stuck with a bad administrator, multi-year budgets might be a bit unconstitutional, etc.

Comments

Re:NASA's so called Budget

[MyLongNickName]

I'd donate 20$ a month to NASA easily, without a second thought.
And that's probably 1000x bigger than their portion of my taxes too.

Wonderful, but your numbers are a bit off. NASA's 2011 budget was a bit North of $18.4 Billion per year, or roughly $5/mo per person. This also can be translated to $6.50 or so per month per adult or to $11 per month per working American.