Congress, NASA

Feingold bill would delay Constellation

Last fall Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) introduced S. 1808, legislation titled the “Control Spending Now Act” designed to, as its name suggests, reduce federal spending through a series of budget cuts and related reforms. No action has taken place on the bill since its introduction in October (understandably, as the Senate was a little busy with health care reform, among other issues), but his office has been sending out a series of “Spotlight on Spending” releases designed to draw attention to various provisions of the bill.

On Friday Feingold’s office sent out the latest version: “Save $24.7 Billion by Delaying a Trip to the Moon”. Feingold proposes delaying a human return to the Moon by five years to create that cost savings. From the statement:

“I understand the appeal of sending astronauts back to the moon, but given our current fiscal situation, we need to prioritize how we spend taxpayer dollars,” Feingold said. “Not only would a trip to the moon in the current time frame not make financial sense, rushing it through as planned could subject our astronauts to unnecessary risk. With the White House-appointed Augustine Commission [sic] saying that the mission simply isn’t fiscally viable as planned, we should delay it. The president needs to modify NASA’s plan to preserve key missions while controlling spending.”

The bill would allow NASA to spend up to $600 million a year “solely for purposes in connection with research and technology development and maintenance of the manufacturing and technology base” for human lunar exploration. (Elsewhere in the bill another non-NASA space program is targeted for cancellation: the Defense Department’s Space Tracking and Surveillance System satellite constellation.)

A few comments about the bill: First, it assumes that NASA is still on track for a human return to the Moon in 2020, something that various analyses, most recently that of the Augustine committee, indicated it was highly unlikely. The bill’s language does not explicitly call for a five-year delay, only a prohibition on spending “to support a human lunar mission under the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Constellation Program scheduled to occur before the year 2025″. Getting to the Moon by 2025 under the current “program of record” and funding profile looks to be a challenge anyway.

Second, it’s not clear exactly how Feingold calculates the cost savings that such a delay would realize. Feingold’s release states that a five-year delay would save $24.7 billion over ten years, citing data from the CBO. The CGO did issue a report last April titled “The Budgetary Implications of NASA’s Current Plans for Space Exploration”, but it didn’t include the scenario Feingold mentioned.

Finally, this proposal may sound a little familiar: it’s something the Obama campaign floated in November 2007 as almost an afterthought to an education policy white paper; the five-year Constellation delay would help pay for an early education initiative. The Obama campaign, of course, eventually abandoned that plan, but it appears Sen. Feingold isn’t averse to recycling the idea.

33 comments to Feingold bill would delay Constellation

  • common sense

    What is clearly, to me anyway, happening is a total lack of leadership. Not leadership at NASA, leadership everywhere. Now this should somehow put NASA on alert right? It may be a sign of things to come. The aim today is Constellation, tomorrow?

    But hey wait just a minute… Could it be just much ado about nothing? Political mumbo-jumbo? “Control Spending Act Now”? Yeah sure. 2010 is looming… Now that I think of it again, it probably is just that. Time for some CYA.

    Oh well.

  • Robert G. Oler

    common sense

    there is in my view something more going on here then just “Terry Schiavo” like sporadic movements…meaning movements of a brain dead body that is just twitching.

    A lot of what happens in the future in the Congress depends on what happens in MA on Tuesday night. Ironically I think that if Scott Brown wins, any sort of exploration effort is (along with the health care bill) “toast”.

    If Brown wins three things are going to be apparant to all the members of Congress who are up for reelection (ie the ones who havent indicated that they are not running) and the folks in the Senate who are in the same boat…1) no state is safe no matter what the party and the color of the state, 2) Obama has no coattails (and there is no GOP leadership worth mentioning) and 3) the voters want the spending shut down. (or at least want spending that produces results that can be seen and are good).

    In my viewpoint this last point sends human exploration of anything in space that cost any serious amount of money back onto the drawing boards…and in my view will seriously impact any recommendations that the Obama administration is going to send regarding human spaceflight to the Congress..

    At somepoint in all of this will be a fight for Congressional leadership (I think in both parties) or at least defacto leadership…and Russ F is in my view going to make a stab at being a “uniter” in The Senate…and part of that is going to be spending.

    If Brown wins I think that the Congress is going to go on a witch hunt for spending cuts (to try and get the deficit under semi control) …and I cannot imagine that any Earth bound spending of the amount it would take to go back to the Moon (or go anywhere) is cut before we cut “jobs for astronauts”.

    Hold on to you’re seats…If Brown wins, the earthquake in Haiti is going to seem chump change in terms of politics. (I give him a 60 percent chance of doing just that…see my facebook page).

    Robert G. Oler

  • common sense

    I don’t know if the MA election will have any bearing on HSF but it may on this WH. And this WH is probably going to pay the price of bailing out the wealthy so to speak, which is not that different from the previous WH. Status quo is bad and it seemed that back in 2008 they had understood it. So now they may have made “friends” with the various powerful lobbies but they may have lost the public that put them there in the process… Perception? Reality? Well perception is everything. If Brown wins we may very well welcome Palin to the WH in 2012. Now that would be something!

    As to HSF, a little mini speck on their radar. The previous WH had most likely hoped they would at least have something nice to show off by the time their terms ended and they were not that lucky. Who in heck would bring HSF into the public’s eye today considering the ongoing failure it is? HSF can be a feel good moment for the US provided it is successful or it ends up being yet another spending account.

    Of well.

  • common_sense: What is clearly, to me anyway, happening is a total lack of leadership. Not leadership at NASA, leadership everywhere.

    Unfortunately, this is true. We Americans would much rather squabble among ourselves (often over pointless partisan point scoring which can actively damage the country, e.g., ITAR) than accomplish anything constructive of useful. On this ground alone, it looks increasingly likely that US leadership in space (or much of anywhere else) is finished.

    My apologies for posting this: I usually try to be positive, but the nature of the attacks on the Obama Administration (which tried much harder than the last one for bipartisan solutions) have left me very pessimistic about our national future.

    — Donald

  • Robert: If Brown wins I think that the Congress is going to go on a witch hunt for spending cuts (to try and get the deficit under semi control)

    If we can draw any lessons from California, this may well happen. We have a Republican governor who (at least at first) tried for bipartisan solutions, and failed because neither party was interested in real compromise, and one saw advantage in blocking every realistic proposal. As long as at least one party remains united in blocking everything, it becomes very difficult to create solutions of any kind. The end result was massive spending cuts with no real plan behind them that (in my opinion) will do massive and probably permanent damage to our State.

    It looks increasingly likely this will be the future for our country. We are no longer the _united_ states in anything but name, only a mess of ideologies and interests with increasingly little in common and no interest in finding a middle ground. In other words, national politics is space politics writ large.

    — Donald

  • common sense

    @Donald F. Robertson:

    I don’t know but I find the current state of things very, very disheartening. Leadership by consensus is a great thing in my view but it still requires leadership. The perception is that, I believe, the leadership part is lacking. Leadership by consensus does not necessarily mean you try to make everyone happy but rather that you bring everyone to your point of view as a leader. Unfortunately it seems that it is rather the former than the latter that is happening right now. I would love to be wrong and after only 1 year it is difficult to make final judgments on anything let alone running a country but appearances are playing against this WH.

    We shall see.

    Oh well.

  • Common sense: It is worth reading the editorial in this week’s Economist. This is a conservative publication that has found some positives in the current Administration’s performance, albeit with a lot of qualifications.

    — Donald

  • common sense

    @Donald F. Robertson:

    I assumed you meant this http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15271012 and I don’t think it is that diferent from what I said. Perception in a multi-media world is every thing. The current perception is that the President forgot all of his boldness/leadership on the front of the WH when he got in. And it is regardless of his, or not, achievements. Remember he was elected in a non traditional way dare I say. And if those who actually helped him win don’t think that he delivered then they will stay home next time. Polls or no polls. Pundits or no pundits. Editorials or no editorials.

    Then again, I may be wrong.

  • Mark R. Whittington

    As Jeff Foust seems to be hinting, Feingold has no idea what kind of savings, if any, would take place for abandoning the Moon and indeed all space exploration. That and the fact that his bill won’t save much of anything suggests that there is something else going on besides the desire of an uber lib like Feingold to be a fiscal conservative. I would suggest that it stems more from a desire to cut programs that Feingold doesn’t like as well as seem to be a deficit hawk than to actually cut real spending, such as entitlements. After all, Feingold voted for health care reform that will explode the deficit by trillions.

    Mind, space exploration is in very serious danger just because, as another poster suggested, there is no leadership. Bush was able to provide some to get the exploration program going, though he did underfund it. One wonders if Obama could save the space exploration program even if he wanted to.

    This has nothing to do with Brown’s potential victory. So far as anyone knows, space has not been an issue in the special election and Brown is not advocating willy nilly cutting with no priorities.

    It;s going to be a rough few months, if not years though,

  • sc220

    If Brown wins, then it is likely that the sentiments that we saw in 1994 will prevail in 2010. I agree with Robert Oler that this will not bode well for NASA and the current socialist approach to space exploration. If you want a bearing on where things are likely headed, read what Newt Gingrich has written over the last few years. He wants to see a dramatically different approach to space, one that may not involve NASA at all. Read the tea leaves.

  • Mark R. Whittington

    sc220 – NASA;’s budget has been roughly flat in real dollars since the early nineties. One doubts that Gingrich is going to have any effect on NASA or space policy unless and until he becomes President. His idea of a Mars Prize is unworkable.

    PS. Feingold also voted for the stimulus package. This new measure of his is a crock.

  • Mark R. Whittington

    PPS – Taking a look at the Feingold bill, it looks like a gab bag of cuts to various corporate welfare, some military, some other things not beloved of uber libs like Feingold, I should also note that it has no co-sponsors. I would suggest this bill is more for public relations than for actual legislation. (“Look, see, I’m fighting to cut spending!”)

  • NASA Fan

    Perhaps Obama is waiting to announce his “Plan for NASA” because he wants to see how the MA election unfolds. Politicians , with all their ‘handlers’ tend to over-react to things; this may be the case if Brown wins. If Obama was excited about his plans for NASA, and they thought they would help his administration politically, we’d hear about it by now in an official announcement with all the fan fare that accompanies Presidential initiatives that they like. . Bad news is always something politicians want to delay, until they have no choice.

    In any case, you could cut all discretionary spending on the Federal Budget, and it would make no difference in the ‘deficit spending culture’ we have in the former good ole U.S of A.

  • Loki

    I’m beginning to suspect that if Obama’s plan for NASA was going to be good news, he would have announced it by now. In fact, the longer he delays the further down the PoR path NASA goes. It’s beginning to make me think that the plan will be mostly the status quo, but with perhaps some “flixible path” like elements to it (such as an asteroid mission while waiting for lunar systems) and maybe a small bone thrown to private space in the form of a few extra $s for commercial crew/ cargo. But I suspect that it will not likely be anything real earth shattering or else he would have unveiled it by now.

    Even though this bill probably is just grandstanding (“look how fiscally responsible I am for cutting NASA spending… What’s that? No, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain who continues to vote for pork-laden bills and literally trillions of deficit spending, no no, pay no attention…”), it does point out one of the cheif advantages of space privatization: no longer having to put up the entirety of HSF funding being reliant on a line item in the federal budget that can be cut at a whim by two-faced politicians like Feingold.

  • MrEarl

    I to do not hold out much hope for NASA in general and US human spaceflight in particular. It’s been under funded for years and always will be. Commercial enterprise can only take up some of the slack. Within 12 to 18 months the US will be out of the manned spaceflight business for a long long time and when once we do start flying again the new craft will not have half of the capability of our present vehicle.
    The United States has become risk adverse to the point of surrendering everything that made us great in the first place, like exploration and freedom.
    A nut job tries to explode his crotch on a crowed plane and everyone is prepared to lay down their freedom and privacy for a plane ride. Half the public is so afraid I believe they’ll gladly allow full cavity searches. The politicians and the media just fan the fear. In Maryland you can see a small example of this every time snow is predicted. You would think that the “white death” is descending upon us.
    Space advocates will fight about where to go, how to get there and what to do once we arrive but the fact is we aren’t going anywhere. Orion will be cash starved and delayed till it’s finally cut. The US will not make the proper commitments to private space flight and that effort will wither on the vine. Some time around 2020 the US will abandon the ISS while the Russians, Europeans and Japanese continue to utilize it, inviting the Chinese and Indians to join them. In the next 20 years the race to the moon will be between China, India and Russia/Europe with the US left out completely and I don’t think these nations will see the moon, or the capability to get there, as a disposable commodity.
    I despair for our future. I really do see this as the beginning of the end of America as a leader and inspiration of others.

  • I usually try to be positive, but the nature of the attacks on the Obama Administration (which tried much harder than the last one for bipartisan solutions) have left me very pessimistic about our national future.

    Emphasis mine. Donald, with all due respect, this statement makes it hard to take anything you write about politics seriously.

  • Feingold’s bill could save us $2.5 billion a year for 10 years. Wow! Last years Federal budget was $3.1 trillion, more than a 1000 times that amount. If Feingold is serious about reducing Federal spending then reforming wasteful Federal health care expenditures could save us over $200 billion a year.

    http://newpapyrusmagazine.blogspot.com/2001/11/how-real-public-option-could.html

    Finally getting out of Iraq could save us another $100 billion a year and funding a million man Afghan army and police force to replace nearly 70,000 US troops in Afghanistan would save us at least $50 billion a year since Afghan soldiers salaries are less than $2000 a year. So that’s $350 billion in annual savings compared to $2.5 billion.

    Of course, since the NASA budget actually generates more money than it consumes, Feingold’s bill would be costing the US both money and jobs!

    http://thespaceadvocate.blogspot.com/2009/12/you-want-economic-impact-you-cant.html

  • Robert G. Oler

    Marcel F. Williams

    the funding that RF wants to cut will generate absolutely nothing in terms of revenue for the US (in excess of its cost).

    Jobs supported by taxpayer dollars that do not create value for their cost…are useless.

    Robert G. Oler

  • Robert G. Oler

    NASA Fan wrote @ January 18th, 2010 at 5:55 pm

    Perhaps Obama is waiting to announce his “Plan for NASA” because he wants to see how the MA election unfolds. Politicians , with all their ‘handlers’ tend to over-react to things; this may be the case if Brown wins…

    If Brown wins (and I think he will…by between 8 and 14 points) it will be hard to over react to his victory. Particularly for the Dems, although the GOP needs to be aware of the fact that it is about to get a house cleaning as well from the “middle of American” politics.

    That is why human space exploration is, in terms of a Brown victory …”toast”.

    Robert G. Oler

  • Robert G. Oler

    Mark R. Whittington wrote @ January 18th, 2010 at 5:28 pm

    LOL how do you explain the fact that in a Rasmussen poll a solid majority of Americans are opposed to returning to the Moon or any human space exploration?

    RF has bet, and I suspect that he will get a reasonable amount of moderate support in this…that there is a new direction coming in the Senate (if Brown wins).

    He SB wins, you are going to find in the Congress both parties leadership is under attack and losing control. Morning Joe well described it

    Robert G. Oler

  • Robert G. Oler

    common sense wrote @ January 18th, 2010 at 2:56 pm

    Reality? Well perception is everything. If Brown wins we may very well welcome Palin to the WH in 2012. Now that would be something!..

    doubtful. In my view a SB victory is more or less a disaster for an extremist like Palin…unless Palin morphs her campaign substantially and that doesnt seem likely.

    Robert G. Oler

  • Robert G. Oler

    Donald F. Robertson wrote @ January 18th, 2010 at 4:16 pm

    It looks increasingly likely this will be the future for our country. We are no longer the _united_ states in anything but name, only a mess of ideologies and interests with increasingly little in common and no interest in finding a middle ground.

    Donald. I think that the opposite is occurring (one reason I want Brown to win so badly).

    In my view what has happened (and I think space politics/policy reflects this) is the rise of the corporate influence on both parties behavior. The “bases” are really just ideological eyewash…in terms of how both parties use the federal governments piggy bank, there really is no difference…the only difference is whose corporate accounts the money is being funneled to…and even that distinction has blurred with the TARP…both parties were all gung ho to hook up the corporate folks who had gotten us into this mess to the federal trough.

    I disagree that Obama tried much of a bi partisan approach to his health care…but I do agree that the GOP was just going to be obstructionist (or useless in what they recommended)…when parties are out of power they can obstruct on the theory of ideology, but when they are in power…they do about the same things just ram legislation down that the people increasingly dont want.

    In a sense we need a “cleansing” of the temple in our national lives…a sort of “consequence” for the just rampant spending that has taken place under both the GOP and Dems (and the misrepresentations to the people by both parties).

    Space policy in human spaceflight reflects this. the only thing unifying Sheila Jackson Lee and Pete Olsen is the desire to keep federal dollars flowing to groups which are simply pork, no real useful things come from NASA human spaceflight.

    The trick is to have them be responsible for the dollars they spend. I am quite hopeful that Scott Brown is the start of a virtual revolution topling both parties and forcing them into a reorg.

    We will see tomorrow Robert G. Oler

  • Well, Robert, I see a Brown victory as another big step into national paralysis and eventual chaos, which may or may not mean toppling both parties, but undoubtedly would not be a good thing for the Republic.

    — Donald

  • Robert G. Oler

    Donald F. Robertson wrote @ January 19th, 2010 at 1:55 am

    Well, Robert, I see a Brown victory as another big step into national paralysis and eventual chaos,..

    I dont. The Republic is ungovernable from the extremes. The Founders set it up to be that way. They also set it up so that eventually the people could take control of it back.

    We are seeing that.

    Robert G. Oler

  • red

    The first lesson I hope NASA learns from this (and other budget-cutting proposals, poll results, etc) is that the new HSF program should not be designed to collapse in the face of inevitable budget swings or downward trends. It should not be designed to resort to large schedule delays and long-term cost increases, or to raiding other NASA programs, when faced with mild budget reductions.

    The second lesson I hope NASA learns from this is that NASA HSF should be more than just a jobs program and an Apollo reenactment, which is essentially what NASA’s current POR HSF exploration program is. The original Vision for Space Exploration and the Aldridge Commission (now backed up by the Augustine Committee) included a strong technology development effort in areas like ISRU and many others that could improve our long-term space development prospects and deliver technology benefits at home. ESAS scrapped this and existing NASA technology efforts. The original VSE (etc) also included a strong robotic exploration and astronaut precursor/helper program that would bring more technology improvements and show us what we can usefully do in HSF exploration. ESAS trimmed this way back. The original VSE included strong international and commercial participation, both of which, if designed correctly, should help ease budget problems, improve political support, and provide many “side” benefits (some of which may be more important than NASA exploration itself). ESAS scrapped this, too. The original VSE goals were to deliver science, economic, and security benefits, and it had viable ways to achieve all of these goals. ESAS scrapped this, making NASA Exploration an obvious target for those wanting to trim budgets from areas that don’t deliver benefits to the taxpayer.

    Let’s hope we get a new NASA HSF plan, regardless of whether it’s “Moon First”, “Flexible Path”, or some other variation or mixture, let’s that includes a strong technology program, more synergy between robotic exploration and HSF, practical national benefits that are obvious to the taxpayer, strong and well-designed commercial and international participation, and a plan that is not “budget-brittle”.

  • @ Donald F. Robertson

    This is why I believe that we need three legitimate parties in this country: one liberal, one conservative, and one moderate party that would probably be composed of former middle of the road Democrats and Republicans. We need a true liberal party in this country. And we need a true conservative party in this country. But we also need a real moderate alternative to the two extremes!

  • Robert G. Oler

    Marcel F. Williams wrote @ January 19th, 2010 at 11:48 am

    @ Donald F. Robertson

    This is why I believe that we need three legitimate parties in this country: one liberal, one conservative, and one moderate party that would probably be composed of former middle of the road Democrats and Republicans..

    this is like Joe Biden’s solution in Iraq (when he was a Senator)…it assumes divisions are solid which are not and indeed are arbitrary.

    Robert G. Oler

  • Robert G. Oler

    red wrote @ January 19th, 2010 at 7:13 am

    The first lesson I hope NASA learns from this (and other budget-cutting proposals, poll results, etc) is that the new HSF program should not be designed to collapse in the face of inevitable budget swings or downward trends…

    what I hope is that in the coming years a space policy (and indeed most federal policies) on human spaceflight rethink themselves and are indeed directly connected with the people who pay the bills.

    I dont care how much the folks who are “go to the Moon” or “go to Mars” drum beaters come up with reasons to go…all the reasons so far are 1) paper mache and 2) have no real intention of changing the lives of the folks who are “not going”.

    Federal Spending should pass a “we the people” test. What does the spending do to make the “People” have a better life, have a better business, have a better future. If those three questions cannot be answered in a manner which is so obvious as to be clear in the first minute or two of the answer…then we should simply pause and question why we are doing the spending.

    Look at all the reasons given out for Ares and Constellation. None of them are worth a bucket of warm spit. They are all so amorphous as to be undefinable. Particularly in the face of Delta and Atlas…but even more so in the face of someone “Musk” who in a country that values free enterprise is the model of how that enterprise should work.

    I’ve never gotten an answer from one single Ares hugger…why? Why should that rocket, particularly Ares 1 be pursued in the face of Atlas and Delta…much less in the face of Musk.

    Whittington talks about “some other things not beloved of uber libs like Feingold, ” (this thread)

    Yet he can never explain doesnt even try…how he supports a federal effort to create a rocket that competes with someone who is spending their own money to develop a free enterprise system.

    I dont get it

    Robert G. Oler

  • […] Feingold bill would delay Constellation – Space Politics […]

  • Robert G. Oler

    http://www.politico.com/politico44/

    who wants to bet that this is the start of the end of the kind of human exploration of space that the far right folks seem to think is necessary…yes.

    Robert G. Oler

  • Curtis Quick

    1) The results in Massachusetts signal a change that has been on the minds of America for months. 2) Congress now knows that it will have to back that change or be re-molded by the people come this fall. 3) NASA would be best served by realizing that to win the war you need to be willing to lose some battles along the way.

    I think it has always been true, but often not realized, that people don’t really believe that we can spend our way out of the mess we are in. The actions of the administration and Congress up to this point have been seriously at odds with this view and the results in Massachusetts confirm this. If the administration and the Dems in Congress are smart, they will embrace this view and claim it as their own. They will say they were always about sensible spending and reasonable governance. They will cut their losses and give up the current anemic (yet expensive) health care bill with the long view (next November) in mind. If they are clever enough, they may even be able to keep a slim majority in the fall. However, if instead, they stick in their heels, they will lose everything, now and in the fall. I don’t expect the latter, but who knows – this is politics after all.

    What I do expect is a worried Congress that goes on a witch hunt to find and cut any and all wasteful or questionable spending it can. Ironically, this will be one of those rare instances in politics when the good of the one (the legislator) is also the good of the many. For, by eagerly being seen to cut spending, congressmen and senators will not only save their own necks, but they will actually be helping government to reduce in size and expense. We may even hear from some who are brave enough to tell us the truth and declare that we have become a nation of people who wish to be served rather than to serve, a nation living on entitlements instead of hard work, a nation that looks back to glory days instead of forward to unmet and daunting challenges worth working hard to achieve.

    NASA is going to get slashed, no question about it. But they have a choice here. They can go on a voluntary weight reduction program, keeping only what they need for the future, or they can get multiple and drastic amputations leading to an eventual demise. NASA would be wise to offer up the Ares program for cancellation if it means staying in the game later on. They would be wise to partner up with commercial space and make their many excellent facilities available to help support the new space market. This would not only help new space, but keep NASA in the game. NASA would be wise to ask congress to divert some of the Ares funds to help support commercial space. This plays well if they remind Congress that the ISS is in danger of not being utilized as the beloved national laboratory that is before it is mothballed because we lack the capacity to ferry astronauts there and back. In fact, if they play their cards right, NASA could even end up remaining in the driver’s seat by getting sign-off rights on Dragon. The point here for NASA is, what good is keeping your queen if you only get checkmated in the process!

  • […] has nothing to do NASA. I haven’t gotten a response yet beyond a note that Sen. Feingold introduced a similar provision in S. 1808, the “Control Spending Now Act”, last fall. That provision would have delayed a human […]

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