I’ve noticed on the web and in mailing lists over the last day that there has been some confusion regarding exactly what is going to happen to the budget. Part of this confusion stems from the White House fact sheet announcing the new space initiative, which makes it unclear exactly how much more money NASA is getting. Some people have read it and concluded that NASA is getting only $1 billion more over the next five years, which is only partially correct. Even smart people like Jeff Bell are led to conclude the administration is saying two different things. There is, though, a method to this madness…
The key fact to remember is this statement from the fact sheet: “the five-year total NASA budget of $86 billion.” This is a five-year budget plan that (apparently) existed prior to the new initiative. This works out to an average of $17.2 billion/year, which is greater than the (approximately) $15.4 billion in NASA’s 2004 budget. The fact sheet doesn’t state it, but this five-year budget appears to have factored in an average annual increase of about 3.75%. If you use that factor you get budget numbers that look something like this:
| 2004 | $15.4 |
| 2005 | $16.0 |
| 2006 | $16.6 |
| 2007 | $17.2 |
| 2008 | $17.8 |
| 2009 | $18.5 |
| 05-09 sum | $86.1 |
Now, the fact sheet goes on to say that the President proposes changing this so that there is a 5% growth rate the first three years (FY05-07) and a 1% growth rate the following two years (FY08-09). In that case the budget looks something like this:
| 2004 | $15.4 |
| 2005 | $16.2 |
| 2006 | $17.0 |
| 2007 | $17.8 |
| 2008 | $18.0 |
| 2009 | $18.2 |
| 05-09 sum | $87.2 |
The difference between these two budget plans is… $1 billion! (Well, $1.1 billion, but in Washington that’s literally a rounding error.) That’s where the “extra” $1 billion is coming from: it’s not being added evenly—although some might be led to conclude that—but instead it’s being added primarily to the first few years.
This plan provides additional money up front, but could cause some problems down the road. Note that under the old plan NASA would actually have more money in FY09 than under the revised plan. Moreover, the 1% increases in the outyears likely won’t keep up with inflation, in essence trimming NASA’s budget in real dollars ever so slightly. However, this plan is just that—a plan, one that will likely not be implemented exactly like how it is proposed here even for FY05, let alone FY09. Stay tuned…
