If the President (or, more likely, the White House) decides to re-prioritize planetary science, then a lot more funding will come along with it.

Over the last three years, Congress cut the funding for commercial crew — an Administration priority — by 62% from the Administration’s request.

With all due respect, space advocates need to forget the JFK era. That was a fluke. Lyrical presidential speeches will not magically convince Congress to increase space spending in an era of huge annual federal deficits. No one in Congress is interested in planetary science beyond the ones representing the relevant districts.

And as we have seen over the last few years, anything President Obama likes automatically is opposed by the Republicans in both houses. I would suggest a better strategy is to fly under the radar and look for private sector funding — which isn’t really there, so that’s why you need taxpayer funding. Again, not a priority for most politicians.

That’s correct. But it’s Congress that signs the checks. The President proposes, and Congress disposes. I agree, however, that Presidential leadership can count a lot here. The budget proposal paints a holistic picture of the agency that Congress is being asked to fund, and if the picture that is painted doesn’t support planetary science adequately, Congress is unlikely to Photoshop that support into it. The Administration tells Congress what NASA needs to do its job, and Congress simply doesn’t have the management perspective on the agency to argue with the details and how it all fits together. Now, that doesn’t stop Congress from fiddling with the details, but without that perspective, such fiddling is usually considered patchwork earmarking.

If the Administration decides to give planetary science a higher priority, one can hope that that Congress would follow that lead. But if the skids aren’t properly greased, they won’t. The most advantageous situation would be a strong President who is largely respected by Congress. But we don’t have that right now. Re-prioritization of anything by this President is an expression of leadership that, very reflexively, is not likely to garner support of at least the House majority.

The President *does* control the OMB which does makes the budget request every year. The request functionally anchors all further budget discussions about individual programs, particularly for smaller ones like Planetary. The Administration also decides whether to request new starts for bigger missions (like Europa Clipper) and how to spend money already allocated. NASA spending Planetary Science money for the JWST and Earth Science in the FY2013 operating plan is the consequence of low Administration priority.

If the President (or, more likely, the White House) decides to re-prioritize planetary science, then a lot more funding will come along with it. There’s a lot more going on than just congressional appropriations, and we have to engage with each part of the process.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/lawmakers-rushing-to-reach-budget-agreement-to-avoid-another-shutdown/2013/12/05/7654a776-5ded-11e3-be07-006c776266ed_story.html?hpid=z5

I think this is basically correct, and grounding the argument in monetizable benefits is smart, but what the greater science community doesn’t seem to understand is that without support from real economic experts or without showing some real economic awareness, a short highfalutin message like this from astronomers means little. It’s not a clear message. Just empty handwaving about drivers of economic growth by non-experts in economics.

By the same token, House and Senate members ought to be weighing in on the nature of dark matter and the structure of the universe.

In this context, the recent address by the incoming AAAS President Bill Press is marvelous. He attacks the question of what’s so important about basic research with some real grounding in the history and mechanics of economics. Now, Press is not an economist. But he hails from several research worlds, and in this address he makes the case that the science community can really speak the language of economics.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6160/817.full

More responsible advocacy from the AAS would be to link the details of what they do to words like these. In this case, how exactly does astronomy fit in this picture? What the science community could do is to provide its members with some real marketing skill training that goes beyond spouting short and somewhat empty highfalutin messages about economic growth. Bill Press (who actually comes, long ago, from the astronomy community!) has tried to provide some leadership in that here.