NASA Invokes Anti-Deficiency Act

I can't find anything on the web about ADA that relates to this. Everything I read just says that it is to "prevent the incurring of obligations or the making of expenditures (outlays) in excess of amounts available in appropriations or funds".

So, basically NASA cannot outlay funds in excess of what's been appropriated. That sounds like it has to do with NASA not giving the contractors excess funds.

I can't find anything that talks about how contractors would violate this. Is Bolden saying that the contractors have spent money in excess of what's been appropriated to them? I can't imagine that any company would do that.

This is kind of like saying Lockheed won a contract for 100 million and got 100 million but paid there employees above and beyond that.

I don't see that happening...Must be another explanation.

Interesting comment.

The way it has been explained to us is say Lockheed knows it will cost $25M to shutdown pay off procurement contracts etc when they are terminated then out of the $100M NASA gave them they can only spend $75M on work/people and put the $25M in the bank to protect for termination. course at the end of the year if they didn't get cancelled they have this extra money sitting in the bank, but up until now LM has been planning on spending the whole $100M for the year so as to not dip into their own pockets to cover the $25M Termination cost they have to ramp down, slow down procurement to get the spending under the $75M cap. make sense?

Will the ADA be enforced on ALL NASA FY2010 contracts or has Constellation been singled out?

So Bolden & Co. have chosen an outright war with Congress - and in particular Sen. Shelby (http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=34286).

Does Bolden know what a Pyrrhic victory is?

> So Bolden & Co. have chosen an outright war with Congress - and in particular Sen. Shelby (http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=34286).
> Does Bolden know what a Pyrrhic victory is?

Wow. Does Shelby know what Pyrrhic victory is? Who chose outright war first?

> Will the ADA be enforced on ALL NASA FY2010 contracts or has Constellation been singled out?

I'd like to see more info on this, but I'm actually under the impression that CxP is the only program in violation of ADA. Other programs don't have the high termination costs or are lower-budget overall, and so keep the termination costs in reserve. Or at least, that's what I think is the case.

1. what if Lockheed says they have the money and they will take care of the costs a layoff would involve (if it comes to be), then what?

2. so under this scenario, when nasa awards a contract for 100 million, they only expect it to cost 75 million, because the employer is supposed to be putting the other 25 million in the bank for a "what if" situation?

3. since congress has not passed the 2011 budget, anything could happen, cancelling cx just one of them, what if they keep constellation, what if they decide to cut cots, space station, earth science, etc... do all of those programs have their "savings account" ready as well?

4. this is all a bunch of b/s...

Interesting that NASA management has accepted some of the blame for this. Bottom line question is, "can America's space program really survive a >60% layoff of workers? "

Lets not foret that even though most of he issues probably started with the NASA management in suggesting behind close doors to spend all the money etc... it is the work force of educated engineers that are being asked to pay the price.

Solutions...hmmm lets see; Congess did bail out the banks at a cost of $800Billion; and cash for clunkers... what was that bill? I think Congress should act or the voters will.

JSC workforce just got the same notification. Nobody knows what that specifically means, for example if those of us supporting Orion will be allowed to continue that work, but Mr Coats has told us to standby and to look out for one another. Clearly things are going to get real ugly for the next 6 months.

supposedly Boeing has in their ISS contract that NASA has to cover the T/L. this is the first time a NASA program has ever been reminded of or had the T/L enforced on them IIRC. LM was in the process of moving 600 or so folks off of Orion as part of reducing their remaining cost and protecting T/L. JSC MOD Cx support is pretty much going to grind to a halt with this new budget monkey wrench from what I have heard.

RC:
> Wow. Does Shelby know what Pyrrhic victory is? Who chose outright war first?

Oooh! I know that one. It was that guy who canceled Constellation! Did I get it right?

When BO decided to trash 5 yrs. of work at cost of $9 billion without even first discussing it with Congress, it's obvious who chose this war!

I heard 33%,% but that is still a lot.

The administration continues to demonstrate complete disregard for the law of the land, or is so ignorant and inexperienced that they don't realize they're doing it. And they're not even using a good excuse -- the Supreme Court has already ruled that the government can't do what Bolden claims he must do!!

http://flametrench.flatoday.net/2010/06/nasa-moves-to-kill-moon-program-despite.html

"The administration continues to demonstrate complete disregard for the law of the land, or is so ignorant and inexperienced that they don't realize they're doing it."

Wow, if you're using a Florida Today blog to back your assertion that a move that has obviously been carefully calculated by an army of the Administration's lawyers is illegal, I'm thinking I might be willing to say you're wrong.

I think every law student is required to take a course called, "conflict of the laws" laws are passed every year that conflict with laws passed before.In many cases the conflict is unintentional, IE congress was not aware of the conflict or it was not the intent of congress.Judges must flesh these out,but in a lot of cases by the time the judge acts many years later the executive has won its way.

So you think you're smarter than those making these decisions? Yet you don't seem to understand what the issue here is. The issue is fairly simple. CxP is a billion dollars short this year because of the continuing resolution for the first quarter of the fiscal year, Congressional earmarks, cost-sharing with the Orion contract that could not be executed, and some other issues, almost all a result of Congressional activity. On the other hand, Congress stated in the budget language that you cannot terminate any CxP activities. NASA is now in violation of the law no matter what it does. The ADA says you cannot obligate more money in a given year than your budget. So NASA is between a rock and a hard place. We either have to replan CxP to meet the ADA law, which violates the appropriations law (the budget), or we have to overrun our budget to meet the budget law, which violates the ADA.

I don't understand how the ADA law applies in this case. Termination of Constellation can't happen until FY 2011 so wouldn't any termination cost's have to come from 2011 budget? Forcing the contractors to protect funds for termination liability when it is not possible to terminate the program is clearly an attempt to subvert the expressed will of Congress and/or avoid having to appropriate termination funds in the 2011 budget. Clearly NASA hasn't forced contractors to apply this rule in the past or on any other program in this FY.

My understanding (could be wrong) - The costs would come from the FY2011 budget IF NASA could plan for and budget to include those costs in FY2011. The Congressional language specifically precludes NASA from doing that budget exercise and the problem is Congress can simply sit on its hands and delay NASA from doing this until it's practically infeasible to get these termination costs allocated for FY2011. And they don't have to delay too long to make this happen. As possum alluded to, there are already FY2010 budget shortfalls and other projected Constellation-related obligations that would tie up a good chunk of FY2011 funds. If you go past October 1 (on continuing resolution say), you'd need a spending plan in place and you're burning funds on Constellation, so you're going to be short on money to reasonably transition to any new space plan with these termination costs to cover, basically stuck with the PoR for another year, more sunken costs, etc. So that's probably why Bolden is pulling the ADA card now to speed up the process by inducing the contractors to pull the plug by having them hold funds to cover termination liability. Messy way to do it but otherwise Congress needs to work with the WH to decide on a plan forward ASAP.

You have to feel good about parts of the government that want to decide space policy in the courts. Whichever side you come down on, altering space policy by selective exercise of ADA feels wrong. ADA is a boilerplate call-out in every large FAR acquisition and, due to annual funding of programs, is not treated like it's being treated on CxP. This is particularly troublesome since this smacks of a loophole to violate the Presidential Impound Act of 1974, where it's illegal to avoid work on a congressionally budgeted federal program through executive fiat. This will, and should, get ugly. The law was written for actions of Nixon but who would have guessed it was Obama that would challenge it?

The losers in this move are really everyone. People will lose jobs. Work will stop on all forms of exploration while they sort all this out. Continuing resolution is coming and there will not be anything starting for a long, long time. Really, really bad management decision making. Many are responsible but the buck has to stop at the NASA's Administrator's office. There needs to be a call for the dismissal of Mr. Bolden and Ms. Garver.

Adherence to an actual law trumps following the dictates of a committee report every time. The Obama administration has found a way to implement the new space plan and critics and Congress be damned. These are pretty smart folks in the West Wing; they beat Hillory Clinton, didn't they? Constellation dreamers get real: the game is over. Good-bye, so long. As far as Congress goes, it's Obama -1, Congress-0 and THE GAME IS OVER.
Hoisted on their own petard! henhenhen