John Kelly: Set budget before criticism

John Kelly: Set budget before criticism

Congress is getting antsy about the future of human space exploration.

Some members, like our own Republican Congressman Bill Posey, are worried that the lack of clear guidance and funding for NASA is setting the United States' space program up to be a second-class organization in the world.

Consider what Posey had to say at a House subcommittee hearing last week in Washington:

"Our nation is critically near the tipping point of ceding our leadership in space exploration for our future generations, as many of you already know," Posey argued, according to a written transcript of his remarks to the House Science Committee's Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics.

"Direction from NASA administration has been seriously lacking with respect to their goals. By failing to set priorities within NASA's budget, the administration has left NASA with no priorities.

"As a result, human spaceflight and exploration are suffering and the U.S. will be ceding its leadership in space to China and Russia.

"Should Congress fail to step in where the administration has left a leadership void we will be making an unacceptable compromise in our national security and lose economic and intangible benefits from our space program."

Hyperbole? Perhaps.

Overly dramatic? Maybe.

However, the continued lack of direction and specific funding attached to that direction is a major problem. It's not the White House's fault alone. Indeed, the White House has put forth a national space policy and proposed a budget for the nation's space agency. The Congress has since adopted a national space policy, which deviates from the White House's original proposal, but apparently in ways that President Barack Obama is on the record supporting in the interest of compromise.

NASA has not begun implementing the national space policy outlined in last fall's NASA Authorization Act for one specific reason -- it's not funded.

Congress has not set a federal budget. Language in the existing budget that continues being extended a little at a time actually directly contradicts guidance outlined in the space policy passed by Congress.

The questions for NASA leadership become: Which law are we to follow? The NASA Authorization Act or the federal budget? If NASA leaders opted to begin implementing the space policy Congress endorsed last fall would they be breaking the law by spending money outside what's approved in the federal budget?

The agency remains partly paralyzed by a lack of action by Congress, as much as anything else. Posey was trying to raise that concern with the members of the committee -- and the concerns are on the mark. NASA needs direction and a budget. Other members of Congress joined in the expression of outrage, pointing fingers at NASA leadership and the White House for not implementing the new space policy.

Why isn't NASA hurrying up to build the super-sized rocket that Congress wants developed? Why isn't NASA moving ahead with important decisions about how to achieve the goals it's been assigned? The chief reason is that Congress hasn't done its job and passed a federal budget to fund the policy put in place.