“Flying in the teeth of White House opposition, the space agency’s congressional supporters have apparently guaranteed a 15 percent budget increase by appending the proposal to a spending measure necessary to keep the government running.” So begins an editorial in today’s Houston Chronicle, congratulating Congress for having “done its part by providing the money” for NASA. The problem is, it doesn’t appear Congress has done anything like what the newspaper thinks it’s done.
The editorial, as well as an article yesterday, claim that Congress has given NASA a 15 percent budget increase by tucking the money into the continuing resolution legislation that the president signed into law yesterday. First, there is no sign of that money in HR 2638, which funds agencies like NASA at FY 2008 levels until early March (or until the passage of an FY09 appropriations bill, whichever comes first); there is an extra $30 million for NASA, but that is for disaster relief. Second, it appears the Chronicle is confusing it with the NASA authorization bill that Congress passed last week, which authorizes $20.2 billion for NASA in FY09, but does not appropriate any funding. (Yesterday’s article does note that the bill “authorizes spending $20.2 billion next year”, but the editorial does not make that distinction.) Contrary to what the Chronicle thinks, Congress has not yet done its part to increase NASA’s funding for FY2009.
This difference between an authorization and an appropriation was surprising and confusing to me as a visitor to Congress in support of the space program. The staffers had to explain the whole budget process in detail for our group to understand why NASA keeps falling short in their budgets. I think this difference between the long-term plan of what Congress says NASA should get and what is actually given to NASA in the annual budget is almost unknown in the space activist community. Perhaps it is unknown in the journalistic community as well?
Thanks for highlighting this misunderstanding in the Houston Chronicle. We still need to push for Congress to actually fulfill their promise for $20.2 billion!