At least one member of Congress is concerned that hurricane relief may put a squeeze on NASA’s budget. The Huntsville Times reports that Rep. Bud Cramer (D-AL), speaking in his Huntsville office Monday, said that the combination of supplemental spending for hurricane relief as well as Iraq could make it difficult for Congress to fully fund the space agency for FY2006: “We were already looking at a tight federal budget before this disaster, and now there’s going to be some give and take” in the budget. Cramer also appeared be dropping some broad hints that NASA should consider shifting some of its facilities from hurricane-prone locations like Louisiana and Mississippi. Perhaps to, say, northern Alabama?
Cramer is also concerned that the revised NASA exploration plan may be too expensive to fund within NASA’s current budget. He said that he and fellow members of Congress have yet to be briefed by NASA about those plans and their effect on the budget. Cramer sees two possible scenarios: “One calls on the administration to fully fund going back to the moon and beyond because it was set forth as a national priority. The other plan would be one that cuts numerous NASA programs to pay for a return trip to the moon, and that will have to be evaluated” by Congress. In any event, the Times reports, Cramer said that “for the NASA budget to survive in Congress, the Bush White House would have to make NASA programs a priority.”
As long as you are discussing the interactions between Katrina and NASA, you ought to look at the big picture. You have to in order to fairly evaluate President Bush’s total effect on space policy.
Hurricane Katrina is actually the second huge emergency money hemmorrhage that comes on top of the regular budget that Bush and Congress didn’t cut. The first is the war in Iraq. As of FY2004, the federal government took in 16.3% of GDP and spent 19.8% of GDP. This is not a “tight” budget. This is a budget that is 20% under water, not just in bad times but in good and bad times averaged together. Katrina and Iraq, large though they are, are not most of the problem, although they do make it worse. Most of the problem is tax cuts without spending cuts to match.
Many people have argued that of course the United States can afford NASA since it is only .13% of GDP or .65% of the federal budget. Hurricane Katrina may awaken people to the irrelevance of this argument. When people are deeply in debt, they often strip themselves of small luxuries, even though it doesn’t solve their real problems. You can expect exactly that kind of behavior in Washington in the coming years. Indeed, we have already seen it.
I agree with you Greg. Mr. Bush’s management of the Federal Budget has been an unmitigated disaster, destroying the progress Mr. Clinton made during the “good times.” Mr. Bush cut taxes first, cut almost nothing out of the rest of the budget, then he went to two very expensive wars only one of which (at least in the short term) was necessary or justified — without asking the country to make appropriate financial sacrafices. Thus, he’s left no pad for inevitable emergencies and luxuries (however important) like the Katrina and the VSE, respectively.
I’m still waiting with interest to see how supposedly budget-balancing Republicans are going to even make progress on that goal, let alone achieve it. I’m sure that, even though Republicans now have effective control of all three branches of government, all the new red ink is somehow the Democrat’s fault.
The sad thing is that far too many who should know better will believe that argument for reasons that have nothing to do with anything you could analyze in Qucken.
— Donald
The legislative branch has budget authority, not the administrative. The ironic thing is, the party now in power in Congress rode in on a platform of a balanced budget, which they achieved. Now they’ve been in power, they spend like the party they replaced. Maybe they should bring back Gingrich.
There haven’t been any tax cuts, Greg. There have only been tax rate cuts. If “tax cuts” are the problem, why has federal revenue been on the upswing (the deficit has been shrinking for a while now), and why do you think that would have happened without the stimulus of the rate cuts?
I do agree, though, that spending is out of control, and that this will be the real problem for NASA–that it can’t command as much priority as energy boondoggles, agricultural supports, and bridges and highways to nowhere. At least not without becoming more space stations and space programs to nowhere, but which preserve jobs in the right places.
Dfens: “The legislative branch has budget authority, not the administrative.”
I was taught in civics class that the Administration proposes spending and the legislative branch disposes the funds.
Please don’t take what follows personally, Dfens, because I realize that this is not what _you_ meant, although all too many do mean it exactly this way.
I’d have a lot more respect for this Administration and its appologists if they would once take responsibility for the problems they have created, rather than blaming somebody else. Mr. Bush and his Administration created their budgets, Congress only signed off on them. True, technically and on paper the Congress created the latest financial mess. But, the Administration proposed it, it was signed into law with little change, and the very least Mr. Bush could do is take responsibility for his Administration’s actions.
— Donald
Rand: I am not surprised to see your answer (since I have seen it before), but it is either false or semantically useless. If you are going to claim that tax revenue is on the “upswing”, you shouldn’t count either inflation (about 2% per year) or population expansion (about 1% per year). You also have to be precise about when exactly this “upswing” started.
If you look at the CBO numbers, revenue in total inflationary dollars went down in FY2002, Bush’s first budget; it went down in FY2003, Bush’s second budget; and finally it went up, by a modest 5.4%, Bush’s third budget. So where was that relative to where Bush started? At 94.4% of FY2001, Clinton’s last budget. Or, in constant dollars per American citizen, at 86.4% of Clinton’s last budget. In order to equal taxes in 2001, in constant dollars per American citizen, revenue in 2005 would have to be $2.24 trillion. It won’t be that much.
It is much simpler and more conclusive to look at both revenue and spending as a fraction of GDP. The last budget that Clinton signed was 19.8% of GDP. Spending was 18.5% of GDP. In 2004, spending was 19.8% of GDP and revenue was 16.3% of GDP. As a fraction of GDP, we have an up elevator and a down elevator.
Okay, revenue as a fraction of GDP will be up somewhat in 2005. But nuch of that increase comes from rescheduling and cutting tax rates from postponed taxes, like bringing offshore profits home. These are not sustainable methods to increase revenue.
Donald is correct that the president proposes a budget to Congress, and that the signed budget is invariably substantially the same as the one proposed. Moreover, Bush’s budgets have come back with unusually small changes, because his party has almost completely controlled Congress during his entire presidency. Bush has accepted credit for both the tax cuts and for federal activities. It would be illogical to let him shun blame for the deficit that reconciles the reduced taxes (or even tax rates) with the cost of those activities.
On the other hand Donald has a misleading phrase, where he refers to “two expensive wars”. On the scale of Hurricane Katrina, the war in Afghanistan is not very expensive and never was. On a continuing basis, it is about 1/5 of the cost of the war in Iraq, which if it ended this month might be about the same as Hurricane Katrina eventually will be. (That is, about $200 billion; see the link in my previous post.) But the war in Iraq will probably not end while Bush is president. It might not even slow down.
Anyway, to get back to space policy, no matter how sincere Bush may have sounded when he gave the VSE speech, the mathematical truth is that he is squeezed by much larger priorities. In chess it is called a “forced sacrifice”.
The last budget that Clinton signed was 19.8% of GDP. Spending was 18.5% of GDP.
I don’t know what either of these numbers has to do with revenue, but Bill Clinton signed his last budget at the very height of an economic bubble.
In 2004, spending was 19.8% of GDP and revenue was 16.3% of GDP.
Yes, about a year into a robust recovery from the bubble pop.
As a fraction of GDP, we have an up elevator and a down elevator.
Only if one disingenuously selects two specific years that will magically make their point (and in which case, one can rhetorically stop at any floor one wants).
Most of us are smarter than that, Greg.
Well, Rand, on this one if nothing else I have to side with Greg.
Yes, Mr. Clinton eliminated deficits and set us on the path of narrowing the national debt during “good times,” but plenty of other administrations have had good times and failed to make any progress at all. Mr. Clinton was pilloried by Republicans for his efforts to actually do what they advocated.
On the other side of the equation, Mr. Bush destroyed the gains far faster than the economy by itself would have. Mr. Bush cut taxes and presided over a large net increase in spending and has tried hard to institutionalize both so that they cannot be easily changed in the future in times of need. Worse, he has failed to take public responsibility for his actions.
As Republicans are quick to point out when they claim Democrats do it, all this is a fast road to financial disaster.
— Donald
Rand: When Clinton signed the FY2001 budget doesn’t matter. He could equally have signed it in 1995. The FY2001 budget was put in use on October 1, 2000, which was almost a year after the height of the stock market bubble. Which explains why it had less revenue than FY2000, as the CBO page shows.
I didn’t pick these numbers at heights and troughs. I picked the last year that Clinton had, and I picked the last year with published numbers for Bush. I wish I could pull the revenue numbers for FY2006 from a crystal ball. I doubt that even the FY2006 budget, never mind FY2005, will reveal any rise in tax revenue per citizen, in constant dollars, counted from the beginning of the Bush tax cut.
But I will grant you that in those five years, the population will have expanded about 5% and consumer prices will have risen about 10%.
I just reread the Constitution and it doesn’t say anything about Congress sitting on its hands waiting for a presidential budget. In fact, they don’t need the President to do anything but sign. Even if he doesn’t do that, they can still override a veto. Gingrich’s budgets were consistently less than what the administrative branch proposed, and they balanced the budget in less time than anyone thought possible. He put a stop to 30 years of red ink, and gets zero credit. That’s not propaganda, it’s a civics lesson.
When Clinton signed the FY2001 budget doesn’t matter. He could equally have signed it in 1995. The FY2001 budget was put in use on October 1, 2000, which was almost a year after the height of the stock market bubble.
Yes, when he signed it doesn’t matter. What matters is when he submitted it, which would have been the previous January or so, when the bubble was nearing its peak.
Which explains why it had less revenue than FY2000, as the CBO page shows.
Yes, there was less revenue in October because the economy had since tanked (while he was still president).
I picked the last year that Clinton had, and I picked the last year with published numbers for Bush.
Year choices that remain entirely arbitrary with regard to effects of tax rate cuts. A better choice would have been 2003 (when the economy was reeling from the double whammy of the bubble pop and 911, and the effects of the rate cuts hadn’t yet kicked in) and the most recent year.
I wish I could pull the revenue numbers for FY2006 from a crystal ball. I doubt that even the FY2006 budget, never mind FY2005, will reveal any rise in tax revenue per citizen, in constant dollars, counted from the beginning of the Bush tax cut.
I’ve no idea why you would doubt that. It will almost certainly be the case, barring some economic catastrophe.
Then, why hasn’t the Republican Congress created a balanced budget for the Republican President to sign?
Your recollection of Mr. Gingrich’s Congress is rather different than mine. While he wasn’t as spendthrift as most Presidents of either party, I don’t think he and his friends came close to a balanced budget or even to significantly cutting spending . . . but I could be wrong.
However, while we’re discussing Mr. Gingrich, I remember sitting in an auditorium in Atlanta when he was first trying to get elected. He talked about space and America’s place in it, and very little else. He promised to make it his first priority to do everything in his power to start the colonization (nothing less) of the Solar System. He even wrote a book on the subject (I forget the title, but it was published by S&S’ TOR imprint, probably in the late 1970s). So, where was spaceflight when he was creating his “New American Century” or whatever the hell he called it?
Like many Republicans, if he had concentrated a little less on the social agenda and actually attempted to run the country, started the colonization of the Solar System, and actually accomplished something besides dividing the nation into hostile socio-religeous camps, he might be remembered in a slightly better light.
I was young. I wanted to dream the man’s dream. I subscribed to it. I believe to this date, since once in power he rarely if ever raised the subject, it was largely his fault that it wasn’t even tried, and the spaceflight dream he signed me up for turned into post-Apollo dust.
Yes, I’m very bitter about Mr. Gingrich. It was more important to him to sow the seeds of our country’s increasingly real civil war than it was move out into space. I was lied to.
— Donald
I don’t think he and his friends came close to a balanced budget or even to significantly cutting spending…
The one time he tried it, Bill Clinton vetoed the budget, and then blamed him for “shutting down the government.” Unfortunately, a lot of the American people fell for it.
As to why the current Republicans won’t rein in spending, you’ll have to ask them. I’m not a Republican, and their actions make me ever less inclined to become one (not that the Democrats are particularly appealing, either).
Rand: It is certainly bad mathematics to observe that revenue increased 2.4% (per citizen, in constant dollars) between the second year of the Bush tax cut and the third year of the Bush tax cut, and then conclude that the tax cut raised revenue. Because obviously, in the prior of those two years, FY2003, the Bush tax cut had already reduced revenue.
It is also bad economics to argue that the economy was “reeling” from October 2002 to October 2003 from the stock market decline of 2000 and early 2001, and from the terrorist attacks of September 2001. People didn’t sit back and “reel” for a full two years after these events. For example, Amazon, which was a representative bubble stock, hit its minimum around September 2001. And the GDP numbers show it. By the same measure as above (per person, constant dollars), the economy already expanded from FY2002 to FY2003. So the economy didn’t reel in FY2003, only tax revenue continued to do so.
I stand by my prediction that, barring a tax rate increase, FY2006 tax revenue will be lower per capita, in constant dollars, than in FY2001, the last budget before the Bush tax cuts. I stand by it because it’s not just my prediction, it’s the CBO prediction.
You say that you aren’t Republican, but if your calculations are so fallacious and partisan, you might as well be.
Donald: Your and Rand’s agreement about the deficits of the Clinton years are also counterfactual. The standard method for totalling the deficit these days, and Bush’s method, is off budget plus on budget. This statistic is in the column labelled “Total” in Table 1 of the CBO historical budget data. It shows a budget surplus in FY1998, FY1999, FY2000, and FY2001.
So you and Rand can argue all you please whether Clinton or Gingrich deserve blame or credit for any particular budget numbers. Using current semantics, Washington did balance all four budgets that Clinton signed in his second term.
Donald, when you say, “[t]hen, why hasn’t the Republican Congress created a balanced budget for the Republican President to sign?” You’re right on the question I have, and I agree with Rand in not being too thrilled with the Republicans performance in this regard. The only difference being, I am a Republican.
Then later, though, you say that you’re disappointed in Gingrich for a lack of progress in space exploration, which is largely a function of the executive branch of government. Congress can cut the budget for or not fund a program, but they cannot propose a new program. That has to be done by the executive branch (I’m losing my mind, why did I call it administrative branch before?).
It is easy enough to get lost between the responsibilities of the 3 branches these days. We have the judicial branch creating their own laws and even new amendments to the Bill of Rights. Congress meddles in executive branch functions. The executive branch has a huge budget office that tries to tell the legislative branch how to spend the money. Maybe we need to pass an amendment that requires each civil servant to read a copy of the REAL CONSTITUTION at least once a month.
Dfens: I have to commend you for your honesty in saying bluntly that you are a Republican. Although it is more a matter of being honest with yourself than with other people. It is true that I usually vote Democrat, although sometimes I have abstained between the major parties; and I can think of jurisdictions and races where I would have voted Republican. Maybe what is best for the country is a balance of power between the parties, which is certainly not what we have now.
Anyway, it is just not true that only the President can propose a new program. Anyone can propose a new program. You can propose a new program, if you can get Congress to listen. The executive branch manages all programs, new and old, funded by Congress. In theory, it is like administering, as you say.
But in practice, the government is so complicated that execution is seven-tenths of control. That is why Congress won’t listen to your budget proposals if you are not the President, not even if you are a member of Congress. In effect, executive control has turned the tables for the overall budget, so that morally the President writes and Congress vetoes (or not). Even if everyone in Washington memorized the Constitution, it wouldn’t change the reality of control. And much of the control that Congress retains is devoted to in-district earmarking.
So the Bush tax cut really is Bush’s tax cut, just as he says it is. And the same goes for his spending plans.
There was a news development today which is relevant to this discussion. In my opinion, Bush is a much better president now than he was before, because he accepted blame. As it happens, for federal mismanagement of Hurricane Katrina.
However, I don’t think that Bush will ever accept blame for two even larger and possibly intractible problems, namely the war in Iraq and the rest of the budget deficit. Both of these will affact space policy by sheer budget pressure, as Jeff Foust noted about Hurricane Katrina.
On the other hand, if you look closely at the VSE, you can see that it has nothing that Bush would ever have to accept blame for. He played it safe.
Greg, I agree with you the Mr. Bush deserves credit for facing up to a failure. Finally.
However, I don’t think you are really being fair about the VSE. If Mr. Bush had dumped our European friends to leap into deep space, many would have been just as critical of him as you are for making a best effort to keep the promises. Yes, he pushed hard decisions out, but he had little political choice. (That said, one does have to ask why the Space Station treaty is so all-fired important when Mr. Bush is otherwise perfectly happy to avoid international cooperation and undercut other treaties.) Also, his Administrators at NASA have made a number of very difficult decisions — you (and even I) disagree with many of them but that doesn’t mean they were not politically difficult — to try to get the VSE going forward.
Dfens: I am not disappointed in Mr. Gingrich for failing to establish an expansionist space policy. As we’ve all been discussing, that is a tough nut — both technically and politically — to crack, and I don’t blame anyone for failing to pull it off.
I am incensed at Mr. Gingrich’s failure — after doing a lot of his early pre-election compaigning on just this issue in order to get noticed — to do one whit in office to try to establish the expansionist space policy he advocated. He ignored it in favor of devisive social issues. Whatever you think of the social issues and their importance or otherwise, Mr. Gingrich got into the national spotlight by making a promise and completely ignored it once he had power. To quote Greg, that’s spelt L-I-E.
— Donald