This current crisis has its roots in 1993, when Bill Clinton was sworn in as the nations 42nd president. The new government inherited a NASA Administrator that had been on the job less than a year, but appointed by outgoing President George Bush.
Unable to find a replacement that was acceptable to all interested factions within his government, Clinton chose instead to retain Goldin. But he also handed Goldin a seemingly impossible task -- either slash the costs of the permanent space station that was at the center of NASA space plans, or cancel the project.
The administrator rose to the task. "Ive got a piece of paper that says go fix NASA, " Goldin said in the winter of 1993. The solution was to drastically reduce the U.S. Space Station Freedom and substitute parts that would have been built by U.S. contractors with Russian Space Agency units in a partnership with the Russians. In return for climbing aboard the new station then jokingly called "Space Station Ralpha" for the Alpha design configuration plus the Russian presence --Russia would abandon its long-standing Mir orbiting complex once the new station, renamed the International Space Station, was completed in orbit.
In the meantime NASA would provide more than $400 million to the RSA for use of its Mir station, with flights of U.S. astronauts staying months at a time to gain valuable space experience. But as the years passed, Russian economic woes pressed on RSA, which struggled to meet promised deadlines for the launch of space hardware as the ISS was being prepared for flight.
By the time the first unit was launched into space in December of 1998 the assembly and completion schedule had been revised repeatedly and these delays and related problems cost millions. At the same time, NASAs annual budgets under Clinton were not only not growing, but were being threatened from within by the costs of the stations troubles.
Science and other technology programs, even the space shuttle, were either cut or slowed to make room for the ISS. Congress, not known for adding money to many programs, actually restored more than $100 million in reductions that the administration was to inflict on NASA last year.
Privatization of shuttle operations, and employee buyouts helped to ease the budget crisis, but there was little additional room to absorb any greater growth in station costs.
Last year the administration added more than $200 million to the station account above NASAs budget to help ease the problem. But it was a temporary fix.
But an agreement between Clinton and the Republicans in Congress to stave off growing budget deficit spending set a trap for NASA that would be sprung this summer. In 1997, a balanced budget deal was reached between the two sides and was signed into law by the President. As part of the deal, Congress agreed to sharp limits on federal spending- called caps.
In the first year following that agreement, the effect of the caps wasnt too harsh. But combined with the desire of politicians to spend the unexpected bulging federal revenue surpluses, by 1999 the effect of the caps was to reign in many proposed increases to spending. Unexpected funding for U.S. peacekeeping missions in Bosnia and Kosovo added pressure to the issue, which after all was about setting a total figure for all government spending.
Everybody knew that with these pressures building, agencies not at the center of the priority list either by the White House or the Hill would face the ax so that others could get some increases. And there was also the issue of taking some of that surplus and giving it back to taxpayers in the form of tax cuts, further reducing the amount of the surplus that might be sliced up for either increases or new programs. Of course, there are those who say without the caps there wouldnt be any surplus.
So what can be done? Both sides could agree to raise the caps, thus allowing more federal spending overall and maybe some of that cash going to the space agency. Or additional funds could be shifted to NASA and taken from other areas of the budget, a more difficult political move.
But in any event, the budget showdown of 1999 was bound to happen, and was shaped by events years in the making. That it finally burst into the open less than a week after celebrations about Apollo 11 -- NASAs greatest past achievement -- was simply an accident of timing. Whether compromise can be found or not, the budget clock ticks away: the day that the NASA FY2000 budget starts is 61 days away and counting.
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