Editorial | The New York Times | April 30, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/30/opinion/30sun2.html?
_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin
The space agency is struggling to mount a vigorous program of
exploration and scientific research within a tight budget. So what
has Congress been doing to help it along? Not much, judging from
revelations that hordes of greedy senators and representatives have
siphoned more than half a billion dollars from NASA's budget for the
2006 fiscal year to finance pet projects. It is a terrible diversion
of money.
NASA is hardly broke. Its appropriation for the 2006 fiscal year was
$16.6 billion, an increase from previous years, and Congress seems
strongly supportive of an ambitious space program. But that is not
enough to pay for returning the shuttle fleet to service, completing
the International Space Station and developing a new space vehicle
to replace the shuttles.
Congress only made things worse by requiring that NASA spend $568.5
million on 198 special interest items. That was a record for
political pork and another sign of how out of control this kind of
spending has become since the Republicans took over Congress, waving
a flag of fiscal conservatism. A decade ago only six special items
costing $74 million were forced into the NASA budget by earmarking.
Such diversions cause real harm to important NASA programs. In the
2006 fiscal year, NASA had to redirect half of its planned education
spending, 5 percent of its exploration systems budget and 4 percent
of its science budget to cover these feckless testimonials to
Congressional vanity.
The science cuts were particularly galling because the projects that
were stalled or shrunk had been given priority through a peer-review
process, not through the arbitrary intervention of politicians on
behalf of their constituents. The meddlesome legislators directed
that grants rising into the millions of dollars apiece be awarded to
various colleges, museums, space exhibits and technical consortiums
in their home districts, in that way reducing the money available to
support higher-priority research and NASA's own work force.
We can only hope that sanity returns in fashioning the appropriation
for the 2007 fiscal year. Michael D. Griffin, the NASA
administrator, has urged Congress to reduce its meddling this time
around. Better yet, Congress should forgo earmarks completely.
--
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