EARMARKS
¶Pressure on NASAʼs budget has come not only from the
¶White House, but also from the Congress. In recent years there has been an increasing tendency for the Congress to add "earmarks" – congressional additions to the NASA budget request that reflect targeted Membersʼ interests. These earmarks come out of already-appropriated funds, reducing the amounts available for the original tasks. For example, as
¶Congress considered NASAʼs Fiscal Year 2002 appropriation, the NASA Administrator told the House Appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over the NASA budget that the agency was "extremely concerned regarding the magnitude and number of congressional earmarks" in the
¶House and Senate versions of the NASA appropriations bill.24
¶He noted "the total number of House and Senate earmarks … is approximately 140 separate items, an increase of nearly
¶50 percent over FY 2001." These earmarks reflected "an increasing fraction of items that circumvent the peer review process, or involve construction or other objectives that have no relation to NASA mission objectives." The potential
¶Fiscal Year 2002 earmarks represented "a net total of $540 million in reductions to ongoing NASA programs to fund this extremely large number of earmarks."25 the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station were competing for decreasing resources. In addition, at least $650 million of NASAʼs human space flight budget was used to purchase Russian hardware and services related to U.S.-Russian space cooperation. This initiative was largely driven by the Clinton Administrationʼs foreign policy and national security objectives of supporting the administra-
Presidentʼs Congressional Fiscal Year Request to Appropriation Congress
¶1993 4,128.0 4,078.0
¶1994 4,196.1 3,778.7
¶1995 3,324.0 3,155.1
¶1996 3,231.8 3,178.8
¶1997 3,150.9 3,150.9
¶1998 2,977.8 2,927.8
¶1999 3,059.0 3,028.0
¶2000 2,986.2 3,011.2
¶2001 3,165.7 3,125.7
¶2002 3,283.8 3,278.8
¶2003 3,208.0 3,252.8
¶Figure 5.3-4. Space Shuttle Program Budget (in millions of dollars). (Source: NASA Office of Space Flight) * NASAʼs operating plan is the means for adjusting congressional appropriations among various activities during the fiscal year as changing
¶weapons and the means to deliver them. Space Shuttle Program Budget Patterns
¶For the past 30 years, the Space Shuttle Program has been NASAʼs single most expensive activity, and of all NASAʼs efforts, that program has been hardest hit by the budget constraints of the past decade. Given the high priority assigned after 1993 to completing the costly International Space Station, NASA managers have had little choice but to attempt to reduce the costs of operating the Space Shuttle. This left little funding for Shuttle improvements. The squeeze on the Shuttle budget was even more severe after the Office of Management and Budget in 1994 insisted that any cost overruns in the International Space Station budget be made up from within the budget allocation for human space flight, rather than from the agencyʼs budget as a whole. The Shuttle was the only other large program within that budget category.
¶Figures 5.3-4 and 5.3-5 show the trajectory of the Shuttle budget over the past decade. In Fiscal Year 1993, the out- going Bush administration requested $4.128 billion for the Space Shuttle Program; five years later, the Clinton Administration request was for $2.977 billion, a 27 percent reduction. By Fiscal Year 2003, the budget request had increased to $3.208 billion, still a 22 percent reduction from a decade earlier. With inflation taken into account, over the past decade, there has been a reduction of approximately 40 percent in the purchasing power of the programʼs budget, compared to a reduction of 13 percent in the NASA budget overall.
¶NASA
¶Change Change
¶Operating Plan*
¶–50.0 4,052.9 –25.1
¶–417.4** 3,772.3 –6.4
¶–168.9 3,155.1 0.0
¶–53.0 3,143.8 –35.0
¶0.0 2,960.9 –190.0
¶–50.0 2,912.8 –15.0
¶–31.0 2,998.3 –29.7
¶+25.0 2,984.4 –26.8
¶–40.0 3,118.8 –6.9
¶–5.0 3,270.0 –8.9
¶+44.8 circumstances dictate. These changes must be approved by NASAʼs appropriation subcommittees before they can be put into effect. **This reduction primarily reflects the congressional cancellation of the Advanced Solid Rocket Motor Program
105¶6000 40% Purchasing Power 45% Purchasing Power
¶"Freeze Design"
¶Constant FY 2002 Dollars in Millions
Policy 4500 (Kraft Report) Space Flight for High Priority
3000 Initiated Space Shuttle
¶2500 Upgrades Prgrm
¶2000 Operating Plan Actuals
-
¶
- Flight Rate 7 8 6 8 8 4 4 4 7 — 4
91 92 Y93 Y94 Y95 Y96 Y97 Y98 Y99 Y00 Y01 Y02 Y03 Y04 Y05 Y06 Y07 Y08 FY FY F F F F F F F F F F F F F F F
¶Figure 5.3-5. NASA budget as a percentage of the Federal budget from 1991 to 2008. (Source: NASA Office of Space Flight)
¶This budget squeeze also came at a time when the Space Shuttle Program exhibited a trait common to most aging systems: increased costs due to greater maintenance requirements, a declining second- and third-tier contractor support base, and deteriorating infrastructure. Maintaining the Shuttle was becoming more expensive at a time when Shuttle budgets were decreasing or being held constant. Only in the last few years have those budgets begun a gradual increase.
¶As Figure 5.3-5 indicates, most of the steep reductions in the Shuttle budget date back to the first half of the 1990s. In the second half of the decade, the White House Office of Management and Budget and NASA Headquarters held the Shuttle budget relatively level by deferring substantial funding for Shuttle upgrades and infrastructure improvements, while keeping pressure on NASA to limit increases in operating costs.
5.4 TURBULENCE IN NASA HITS THE SPACE SHUTTLE PROGRAM
¶In 1992 the White House replaced NASA Administrator Richard Truly with aerospace executive Daniel S. Goldin, a self-proclaimed "agent of change" who held office from April 1, 1992, to November 17, 2001 (in the process becoming the longest-serving NASA Administrator). Seeing "space exploration (manned and unmanned) as NASAʼs principal purpose with Mars as a destiny," as one management scholar observed, and favoring "administrative transformation" of NASA, Goldin engineered "not one or two policy changes, but a torrent of changes. This was not evolutionary change, but radical or discontinuous change."26 His tenure at NASA was one of continuous turmoil, to which the Space Shuttle Program was not immune. Of course, turbulence does not necessarily degrade organizational performance. In some cases, it accompanies pro- ductive change, and that is what Goldin hoped to achieve. He believed in the management approach advocated by W. Edwards Deming, who had developed a series of widely acclaimed management principles based on his work in Japan during the "economic miracle" of the 1980s. Goldin attempted to apply some of those principles to NASA, including the notion that a corporate headquarters should