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House Representatives Working On NASA Reform Bill

Posted by Unknown on from the free-bags-of-pork-rinds-to-all-texans dept.

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.

37 of 188 comments (clear)

  1. NASA Reform by smittyoneeach · · Score: 5, Funny

    NASA Reform
    Imagination reborn
    Bureaucratic stubble
    From features shorn
    Burma Shave

    --
    Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
  2. Unconstitutional? by radiumsoup · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If we can go 3 years with no Federal budget whatsoever and count it as "constitutional", I'm pretty sure we can finagle a multi-year budget or two.

    1. Re:Unconstitutional? by smittyoneeach · · Score: 2

      It's really not so much Constitutionality as stability. Congresses don't like explicitly binding follow-on Congresses with financial obligations. (The implicit crushing force of the national debt, well, let's gaff that off like the rest, shall we?)
      One Congress giveth, and another taketh away. And when you're a company trying to do 7 and 8 figure work, you can't have that.
      Which is why McNamara's Nightmare makes the DoD budget into such a Stephen King novel. The rules under which Congress will allocate multi-year funds, e.g. for a nuclear aircraft carrier, are painful.

      --
      Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
    2. Re:Unconstitutional? by sycodon · · Score: 2

      And how could it be political grandstanding unless Harry Reid refuses to take it up?

      Why would he refuse?

      --
      When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
    3. Re:Unconstitutional? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The government is not a business, and attempts to run it as if it were a business are misguided.

    4. Re:Unconstitutional? by crazyjj · · Score: 3, Interesting

      No, there are good physical reasons why NASA facilities are located as close as we can get them within the U.S. to the equator. If I were to reform NASA, I wouldn't move the facilities--I would move them AWAY from Congress (who have so hopelessly politicized NASA that the agency has for 40 years been WAY more of a contractor funnel for Congressional pork than a research agency). Make them an independent agency with hardcore ethics laws to prevent either the President or Congress from influencing their duties, and maybe they could get some actual work done without worrying about which Congressman wants some graft this week.

      --
      What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
    5. Re:Unconstitutional? by sycodon · · Score: 2

      So then...you are for NASA being restructured, even if that funnels "lots of federal money to Texas and to the huge government contractor industry in Virginia."

      --
      When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
    6. Re:Unconstitutional? by Bigby · · Score: 3, Funny

      Look, let's not mince words here. We all know that it's the fault of Democrats & Republicans. The People are trying their best but their opposition refuses to compromise.

      Expanded the variables for ya...

    7. Re:Unconstitutional? by robot256 · · Score: 2

      I know it just looks like pork going to a couple states, but the alternative is what we have with the Joint Strike Fighter--the supply chain is fragmented into all 50 states so nobody wants to kill it, but it raises the overall cost of the program substantially. And science is even harder to fragment than manufacturing--scientists need to be able to work together, and with engineers, regularly to make efficient progress.

    8. Re:Unconstitutional? by Teancum · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The constitutional aspect is derived from how NASA started. Keep in mind that some significant parts of NASA came from the U.S. Army Field Artillery Branch, which was how Werner Von Braun ended up coming to NASA. There were also several U.S. Navy programs that were folded into NASA as well, but the Army is something significant to explicitly mention.

      When the U.S. Constitution was written, there was a significant concern about a standing army running around North America with the potential to stage a coup d'état and thus overthrow any civilian government that had goals and aims which were different from the Army's goals. There are many historical examples which show this concern was well founded, and one of the steps taken to control the Army is to force annual accounting to Congress on their needs and to require annual reauthorization of expenditures.

      The U.S. Navy, on the other hand, was acknowledged to be quite a bit different and even when the U.S. Constitution was written it was acknowledged that some ship building programs may take several years for completion. Even acts of the Washington Administration (yes, that George Washington) through the Naval Act of 1794 had a several year term placed upon its completion to build a fleet of six frigates that ultimately formed the core of the U.S. Navy that exists today. In fact, the U.S.S. Constitution (created in that act) is still a commissioned U.S. Navy warship even today.

      I'll also point out that one of the reasons for creating the U.S. Air Force was explicitly to set up multi-year appropriations for that branch of military service that otherwise wouldn't be possible if they remained a part of the U.S. Army. It was an acknowledgement that the annual arrangements for the Army aren't sufficient for advanced airplanes that may need a multi-year contract for completion.

      In this sense, what is being proposed is acknowledging it takes more than a year to build a reliable rocket, especially for things which will be taking people to other planets. The model that congress should be following for building things in space should be more along the lines of the U.S. Navy where ship will be traveling to distant locations and will be expensive to build. Certainly the notion that a rocket going into space is nothing more than a glorified artillery shell needs to be left behind. I certainly think the notion of a NASA administrator staging a coup upon the federal government with his agency backing up such a coup is laughable by any measure of the imagination.

    9. Re:Unconstitutional? by gr8_phk · · Score: 2

      If we can go 3 years with no Federal budget whatsoever and count it as "constitutional", I'm pretty sure we can finagle a multi-year budget or two.

      And we can borrow and spend money today with no idea how it's ever going to be paid back....

    10. Re:Unconstitutional? by smittyoneeach · · Score: 4, Interesting

      there was a significant concern about a standing army running around North America with the potential to stage a coup d'état

      Your attention is drawn to Six Frigates. Back in the day when the government served the people, (i.e. prior to our Progressive reversal) there was genuine disdain about standing forces because:

      • they cost so flipping much,
      • bureaucracy breeds bureaucracy, and
      • the Team America: World Police concept just wasn't there.
      --
      Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
  3. It also means... by wbr1 · · Score: 2

    ..that NASA could get stuck wirg low levels of appropriations for years at a time. Sigh.

    --
    Silence is a state of mime.
    1. Re:It also means... by Aglassis · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No kidding. How many space platforms have been researched, started, and then killed (NERVA, Apollo Applications, Space Station Freedom, Constellation, Prometheus, etc.)? NASA could probably do more with less if they were allowed to plan things to a reasonable extent. And if all of that wasted money was used productively, we would have had an astronaut on Mars by now.

      The abuse of NASA by Congress and the President is disgraceful. Every President wants to look like Kennedy and every successive Administration or Congress wants to shit of his legacy. NASA simply gets caught in the crossfire.

      --
      Suddenly, the hairy finger of a familiar monkey tapped me on the shoulder. It was time.--G. T.
    2. Re:It also means... by FleaPlus · · Score: 2

      Sometimes NASA needs the flexibility to cancel contracts though, especially when a project goes drastically overbudget or is realized to be a bad investment. If this bill had been passed a few years ago, NASA would quite likely still be wasting a large chunk of its budget trying to get the Ares 1 rocket ready to launch in ~2014.

    3. Re:It also means... by Teancum · · Score: 2

      Part of the problem with NASA's failure to build any new manned spaceflight vehicle since the Johnson administration (or Nixon administration if you are splitting hairs) is that you also burn out engineers. One of the reasons why engineers get involved with building things that require horrible hours and often crappy wages (compared to jobs requiring similar levels of education and talent like writing day trading software for Wall Street companies) is that they want to see their designs actually get built.

      It may be fine for a bunch of lawyers to spend years or even entire lifetimes of effort working on a case that ultimately gets settled for the price of a cup of coffee, but telling that to an engineer that their entire career was a complete and total waste is a good way to burn people out of a job and destroy morale to the point you end up with crap getting churned out by the successive engineers who take their place.

      On a rare occasion there is some knowledge transfer that happens when you start with a clean sheet, but that only happens if you use those same engineers that are already discouraged because their multi-year project just got cancelled. If that keeps happening repeatedly, they won't even bother trying to put any extra effort into trying to discover corner cases and other similar problems that could plague a project until after the problems start to surface.

      There is a huge difference between science and engineering, where certainly science can be passed on to the future. Engineering knowledge is much harder to pass on when the designs for many of the propulsion systems are so different that they might as well be completely different technologies and arguably even different industries.

      There is also the "what if" situation where huge amounts of resources were dumped into the project (like the SCSC) which really didn't result in any significantly new science as the project never got to that stage of development at all. You don't learn too much by pouring concrete in new and exciting ways, as if you could even do something like that in a novel way. I'd be curious as to how much science you really can do on most of the cancelled NASA concepts.

  4. Wasteful spending at end of year? by vlm · · Score: 2

    If funding were fixed for a number of years, the theory goes, money could be spent more efficiently.

    I can't figure out if this would encourage or discourage the "Gotta spend every penny this year or we'll lose the money permanently for all future years" behavior.

    If a multi-year budget means you get $30M for a project, in total, spread across the entire project, then you don't have the headache of spending exactly 3 mil each year for a decade so it discourages wasteful spending at the end of the year. On the other hand if multi-year budget means that $3M is set in stone for all eternity then it encourages wasteful spending.

    Since wasteful spending = votes I'm going to guess it is designed to increase waste.

    --
    "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
  5. NASA's so called Budget by gatkinso · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Is a drop in the bucket.

    The top 5 defense contractors all have larger revenues than NASA's entire budget. The US Army spent more on air conditioning tents and trailers in Iraq than NASA's entire annual budget.

    Want to fix NASA's budget? Actually give them one.

    --
    I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
    1. Re:NASA's so called Budget by smittyoneeach · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Hey, you know: shag all that. Let's make NASA into a national http://www.kickstarter.com/. Pour loot into NASA, instead of these godforsaken SuperPAC ads, and we'll be all over the solar system, lickety-split.

      --
      Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
    2. Re:NASA's so called Budget by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 2

      Not that NASA is the primary customer, by any means; but they farm out enough work that it would be very difficult to increase NASA's budget without also increasing the revenues of major defense contractors. Culturally NASA has a noble mission of doing some good science, often of the flavor with limited immediate payoff; but financially they help keep defense contractors humming when demand for their more lethal products is softer than they would hope.

    3. Re:NASA's so called Budget by gatkinso · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Somehow the cost of the war(s) are not considered part of the military budget.

      Interesting dodge, that.

      --
      I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
    4. Re:NASA's so called Budget by BVis · · Score: 3, Insightful

      See my above comment. Why bring a bill to the floor that has zero chance of passing? The GOP does that all the time.

      He's damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. If he brings the budget to the floor, and it fails, the GOP will get to scream about how their budget would cure cancer, fix global warming, and create a job for every unemployed person in America, but the mean nasty lbrls won't give it a chance. Come to think of it, they can do that if he doesn't bring that to the floor, too.

      So all things being equal, maybe he doesn't want to waste the Senate's limited time in session. Or, maybe, the GOP could give them a bill that could be debated meaningfully on the Senate floor. That's how it is supposed to work. One house proposes and passes a bill, and if the other house won't pass it, then negotiations can start on the issues addressed in the plan. But, the current House's ability to compromise or negotiate can't be seen with the naked eye, so we have the situation we have.

      --
      Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
    5. Re:NASA's so called Budget by dywolf · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

      In fact, we should do that. Set up contribution funds seperate from taxes for certain programs that people would be able to contribute to at will. I'd contribute to NASA in a heartbeat. And give people a tax credit for doing so. You dont contribute, you pay taxes like normal, You do contribute, your final tax bill is reduced by say 5%, since your donation to a specific thing you feel strongly about will likely more than offset the credit.

      Would have the effect of your contribution to the whole spectrum of programs via taxes is slightly smaller, but to that specific program (or two or three) is signicantly larger.

      Plus would serve as semirealtime (well, not realtime, but you get what I mean) feedback to what people actually care about. No manipulated poll data, no sample size/location cherry picking...real data on the entire nation.

      --
      The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
    6. Re:NASA's so called Budget by MyLongNickName · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

      --
      See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
    7. Re:NASA's so called Budget by tlhIngan · · Score: 2

      in other words "you didnt write a bill that we like, so we are taking our ball and going home" It is the same thing as when the Ds in Wi left the state rather than have a vote. the Ds are all worried about the Rs "taking away the right to vote" from the avg american, yet they dont even want to have a vote. You say that "we know it wont win" well, no we dont, it hasnt been voted on, therefore we do not know.

      That's due to oddity in laws.

      Usually the requirements are something like 2/3rds of the legislature must be in session to have a quorum to discuss and vote on bills. But the vote is usually simple majority or other threshold of the attending members.

      By disappearing, what happened is the legislature couldn't convene and conduct business - it was effectively stalled and if the R's controlled a majority (but not enough tor a quorum), it means they can't pass anything because the state constitution demanded a minimum number of attendees.

      It's better than a filibuster. By disappearing, all that's happened is the state is effectively blocked from passing any legislation, including ones to amend the constitution. So if there are bills that are hated and the other side is unwilling to compromise, by not showing up it basically means the bill can never be passed. And it has to be out of state because they can't be recalled.

  6. Radical Idea by roman_mir · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Stop the wars and spend 1% of what is spent on wars on NASA instead.

    --
    You can't handle the truth.
    1. Re:Radical Idea by roman_mir · · Score: 4, Funny

      Maybe it's because I am tired of beating my wife?

      --
      You can't handle the truth.
    2. Re:Radical Idea by roman_mir · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Sure, but if US gov't didn't run the wars, spending on NASA could be increased by that 1% of the cost of war and at the same time the gov't spending would decrease overall. If the SS and Medicare were reformed (AFAIC they should be abolished, but let's say reformed), so that there is means testing - you don't get it if you don't need it (even those who are getting it today), then US economy could actually deleverage, stop the deficit spending, start paying back some of the debt. If the gov't size shrunk, the way it was done in 1921 and 1947, then US economy would actually start growing again within a couple of years from deleveraging. How much easier is it to find some money to fund NASA in a growing economy that is not wasting money and is not running wars than in a war type economy, with many times the war size government?

      --
      You can't handle the truth.
  7. In a bold counterproposal... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Funny

    NASA has proposed reorganizing themselves as the "United Earth Directorate" and absorbing all legacy governments.

  8. Either good or bad, depending by overshoot · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I wouldn't count on much of anything more substantive than renaming post offices to get through Congress for the foreseeable future.

    --
    Lacking <sarcasm> tags, /. substitutes moderation as "Troll."
    1. Re:Either good or bad, depending by Hillgiant · · Score: 2

      And even then, over half are being renamed to "Closed".

      --
      -
  9. Re:Make NASA run like a business... by dbIII · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you do that they'll get out of space completely and do something else that turns a profit.
    "Run X like a business" is simplistic bullshit unless the goal is to make money supplying something someone needs.

  10. Re:Make NASA run like a business... by MickyTheIdiot · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Oh great.

    Sorry... when you think there is ONE system that works in all cases, you're the member of a cult.

    Government agencies are not businesses. I have no problem with them getting other streams of income, but "the market" is not God. Not everything worth doing is going to make a profit, and when you start letting "the market" determine what is good for space exploration, you are at best going to have areas not explored and at worst dead astronauts.

  11. Summary by dywolf · · Score: 3, Insightful

    -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.
    GOOD.

    -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."
    EXTREMELY GOOD.

    -But is it more than political grandstanding in an election year?
    POSSIBLE. But that doesn't mean it shouldn't happen

    -NASA could get stuck with a bad administrator
    As a part of the executive branch, the president himself has oversight. Also, very unlikely; you dont get picked to run nasa if you're a bad manager

    -multi-year budgets might be a bit unconstitutional
    On what grounds?

    --
    The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
    1. Re:Summary by DerekLyons · · Score: 2

      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.
      GOOD.

      Actually, neutral... or at best meaningless. The NASA administrator is already about as insulated from politics as you can get and be an appointed official. (They tend to serve multiple administrations, regardless of party.) The problem, historically, with the office of the administrator is finding someone competent to take it. He's at the mercy of Congressional and Executive meddling, the fickle winds of public opinion, and gets all of the blame and none of the credit. It's a job that almost nobody wants.
       

      -NASA could get stuck with a bad administrator
      As a part of the executive branch, the president himself has oversight. Also, very unlikely; you dont get picked to run nasa if you're a bad manager

      Given the problems in finding a NASA administrator in the first place... Yes, bad managers get picked because they're the best that could be found. Both James Beggs and Richard Truly were disasters for NASA. Dan Goldin was marginal at best...
       

      -multi-year budgets might be a bit unconstitutional
      On what grounds?

      On the grounds that the Constitution has historically been interpreted as prohibiting multiyear commitments (because it specifies an annual budget) and binding a future Congress's behavior.
       

      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.

      Not gonna happen without overhauling how Congress doles out money.... which is a two step process currently. First, the Budget is passed, then an Appropriations Bill is passed authorizing the spending of money. Congress meddles at both steps, as does the Administration.
       
      Basically, this is a bill that doesn't actually solve any problems, or even give any indication that the framers actually understand what the problems are in the first place.

  12. Re:Make NASA run like a business... by Princeofcups · · Score: 2

    Not everything worth doing is going to make a profit, and when you start letting "the market" determine what is good for space exploration, you are at best going to have areas not explored and at worst dead astronauts.

    The market demands an 80 hour work week for slave wages. Great for the guys on Wall Street. Not so much for the workers.

    --
    The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
  13. You're pi radians off by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Most of the current Federal budget hoo-haw is hysteria manufactured for political purposes. It was never an issue in the past.

    You have it completely backwards.

    The budget has always been a searingly-hot political issue. It has been one of the country's major political problems for half a century, and especially since the early/mid 1980s. It's just happens to be a hot political issue where the Republicans and Democrats aren't distinguished from one another. (Just because something is bipartison, doesn't mean it's not political.)

    And that is still the case; the Rs and Ds basically agree that the government should use its powers to funnel the country's resources away from the citizenry to the corporations who fund the campaigns. Budget deficits will usually be a part of that overall program.

    The reason for the "hoo-haw" of the last couple years, is that Republicans are desperate for a personality "wedge issue" because people have little political reason to vote one way or another between those two parties. Without political distinction, voters tend to vote for the better personality, and Obama totally creams any Republican when it comes to that. Obama is probably the coolest president since Teddy Roosevelt.

    So the Rs wear the small-budget costume (as long as it never comes to actual politics). It's non- political; it's marketing. People just like to call marketing "politics" because acknowledging the triteness would hurt their pride too much. "My party is for a responsible budget!"