NASA Budget News Is Not Good
Trump to Ask for Sharp Increases in Military Spending, Officials Say, NY Times
“President Trump will instruct federal agencies on Monday to assemble a budget for the coming fiscal year that would include sharp increases in Defense Department spending; major cuts to other agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency; and no reductions to the largest entitlement programs, Social Security and Medicare, according to four senior administration officials. The outline, drafted by the Office of Management and Budget director, Mick Mulvaney, is the first volley to the federal agencies. Departments will have several days to comment on the plan, and congressional leaders will be alerted ahead of Mr. Trump’s speech to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night.”
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Unfortunately we must look at reality – a grim prospect today. With the Administration pushing for a big military increase and a big infrastructure program and a big tax cut, where will that money come from? First, the Administration is looking for big cuts in places like the State Department. Are we gonna close embassies? Cut staff?
The only conclusion that we can come to is that ALL discretionary budgets are going to be cut. Of course it is confusing when the Administration is apparently asking NASA to study how to launch people on EM-1, doing this will require either great compromises in safety OR more money. Hopefully they will not ask NASA to launch people far earlier and do it on a reduced budget!
We can also expect a big battle over how much the deficit will be increased.
No confusion or surprise. The Trump administration probably isn’t going to support SLS unless there can be a “spectacular feat” during Trump’s first term in office; and an uncrewed test flight just isn’t going to cut it. I worry that robotic planetary missions will face the same hurdle; that the Trump administration will apply the budget axe to any program that can’t provide a payout while Trump is in office. Not trying to get political; just seems to fit Trump’s style.
It’s not looking good. NASA has its defenders, but the strongest defense will be for SLS. I could absolutely see Planetary Science and other parts of the robotic program taking a major budgetary hit.
More scare tactics. During the Iraq/ Afghan wars, military spending approached 18% of GDP. Current spending is in the neighborhood of 13% or so. Where is the enemy or military activity that requires this buildup? NASA and every other discretionary spending will suffer to fight a nonexistent bogeyman.
Look at who the shareholders are of military contractor stocks. A big buildup is about the money, not the military. The https://www.carlyle.com/ group had almost 200 military companies in their portfolio when Bush 43 increased military budgets for going into Pipelinestan and Iraq.
“The Group is managed by a team of former US Government personnel including its president Frank Carlucci, former deputy director of the CIA before becoming Defence Secretary. His deputy is James Baker II, who was Secretary of State under George Bush senior. Several high profile former politicians are employed to represent the company overseas, among them John Major, former British Prime Minister, along with George Bush senior, one time CIA director before becoming US President.”
http://www.globalresearch.c…
If trump is increasing the military budget just look who stands to profit.
Michael, a strong argument could be made that we are entering a renewed “cold war” posture. However, there now exists two legitimate peer states, which have to enter the calculus, instead of the good old days, when it was just USA -vs- USSR. Throw in another couple of second tier “bad actors”, which also have to be considered (i.e. Iran and North Korea) as active threats. Our strategic deterrent is in dire need of modernization. Notice I did not say we need to start adding additional nuclear warheads to our stockpile. However, the existing warheads need to be refurbished, including the development and production of the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW), while simultaneously retiring and dismantling older designs. This can all be accomplished while keeping the net number of active warheads in our arsenal at a steady state. Finally, there is the urgent need to modernize the delivery systems. The Minuteman III is long in the teeth, and has already gone through a few life extension programs. Same goes for the Trident D-5. For the bomber leg of the triad, the LSRO needs to be strongly considered, IMHO.
I assume you meant total government spending, not GDP. Otherwise that would have been $2.6T in 2007.
I did! Thanks for catching the error.
In anticipation, some programs have had their budgets reduced for FY17 and told that expect to remain flat for FY18
I.E. Wfirst is apparently down 30mil.
Well, I think the real question is to what degree Trump’s budget bears any resemblance to what congress actually wants. Or is it just a rhetorical device? Will we just end up on yet another continuing resolution?
That’s exactly right. The president’s budget request, especially their first year budget request, is a statement of policy priorities and only the starting point for long negotiations.
David Stockman had an interesting interview on the debt ceiling. He’s expecting a big ugly showdown and shutdown in the summer when money runs out. This time there is supposed to be a hard stop in the debt ceiling.
Excerpt from Stockman’s interview:
“I think what most people are missing is this date: March 15, 2017. That’s the day that this debt ceiling holiday that Obama and Boehner put together … in October 2015 … expires. The debt ceiling will freeze in at $20 trillion. It will then be the law. It will be a hard stop.”
The impact to NASA could be really bad if there are more ambitious schedule, budget cuts, and shutdown.
If the NASA leaders were good, they would make the case that NASA provides significant positive reinforcement to US engineering and manufacturing capability that in time of war could be easily converted to military support. In that way NASA qualifies for a portion of the military increases even though the added spending is supporting international peace initiatives. This of course is assuming NASA can ever recover from its last 2 decades of spending huge quantities of dollars without designing or building much of anything. So far the jury would look askance at NASA’s capabilities and recent spending history.
Move NASA into DARPA and put a general in charge.
Good idea. They know a thing or two about cost control, right?
National Defense: enumerated in the Constitution.
Civilian Space: not enumerated in the Constitution.
Go figure.
Lewis and Clark Expiration: not enumerated in the Constitution.
Lewis and Clark’s Expedition was a US Army operation: enumerated.
Not that it matters as two wrongs would not make a right…
Actually, the justification to the Congress for the money spent on the Corps of Discovery, was to increase fur trading.
I’m going to guess increasing fur trading isn’t in the constitution.
It affects interstate commerce, so by modern standards, that would be OK. In Jefferson’s time, it was quite a stretch. But nowhere as big an issue as a national bank or federally-funded roads and canals.
The very next phrase after common defense is “promote the general Welfare” and that means whatever we declare our welfare to include.
The preamble has never been considered legal content or enforceable. At least that’s what the Supreme Court has said. You need to look at parts like Article One, section eight for the real list of federal powers. But, when you do, you may be surprised to learn that laws “necessary and proper for carrying into execution” the power to regulate interstate commerce, can mean just about any sort of law Congress wants.
The people who elected Trump are mostly high school degree or less, and they don’t care about that egghead science stuff. At one time this was known as “the revenge of the C students”.
If only that were the case.
Almost exactly 10% of the FY16 NASA budget was for earth science. Want to guess where the Trumpkins will look first for things to cut?
NASA is one of the (if not only) largely non-partisan government agency, with strong support from both political parties. Hopefully, there will be enough support in congress to mitigate and significant reductions.
In addition, Trump has made recent comments about a more human exploration, and returning to the moon. For that sort of major shift, NASA’s budget actually needs to be increased.
“Provide for the common defense”… enumerated. [deleted]
When is NASA’s budget news good? Maybe good is considered not being cut or just keeping up with inflation.
Bad news for commercial space and earth science highly likely. SLS most certainly will remain equal to or higher than 16 levels most likely, especially with the manned moon mission pushed forward to EM-1.