NASA Budget Uncertainty Deepens Amid Headwinds
Since our last Congressional update there have been a number of important developments surrounding NASA policy in Congress, particularly its next budget.
The Biden Administration revealed their $27.2 billion budget request in March, keeping NASA’s 2024 allocation roughly in line with inflation.
While this increase keeps major projects on track like the Artemis Moon missions and the Mars Sample Return, painful budget squeezes are gripping other parts of NASA (including the VERITAS mission to Venus).
To properly gauge the current state of affairs, it’s important to break down NASA’s budget request and the Congressional players who are now wrangling over it. There are also broader fights occurring in Washington over the budget and the national debt that introduce even greater uncertainty into NASA’s fiscal future.
NASA’s FY 2024 Budget Request
The $27.2 billion Fiscal Year 2024 Request for NASA continues a general upward trend during the Biden Administration. Major highlights from this proposal include $8 billion for Artemis, just shy of $1 billion for the Mars Sample Return, and over $2.5 billion for Earth Observation. A full breakdown is available courtesy of NASA.
The continued commitment to Artemis is significant. Combined with the announcement of the Artemis II crew that will circle the Moon NET 2024/2025, it does finally now seem real that we are indeed going back to the Moon.
There is also more than $1 billion included for operation of the James Webb Telescope and development of the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope, continuing NASA’s unrivaled (if expensive) line of Great Observatories.
This budget, however, is not without pain.
The VERITAS mission to Venus was meant to herald NASA’s return to Earth’s forgotten twin after decades of neglect, but the mission was effectively zeroed out in 2024 and beyond. This is due to no fault of the VERITAS team, which has been on-time and on-budget.
This is instead emblematic of wider budgetary and staffing stresses at NASA.
The VERITAS mission to Venus, effectively canceled in Nasa’s proposed 2024 budget due to limited resources and rising costs from the Mars Sample Return. Image source: NASA
One source of stress is an overworked staff at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) still recovering from COVID-19 disruptions and facing increasing competition from a rapidly growing private sector. These pressures led to delays in the Psyche asteroid mission, which rippled outward to other JPL missions, primarily VERITAS.
Another major source of stress is the Mars Sample Return mission. Just last year, NASA had budgeted $800 million for MSR in 2024, a figure that jumped by more than $150 million.
During a recent Senate hearing, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson revealed MSR would require an additional $250 million over the next two years to stay on track. This is on top of a second Independent Review Board set up earlier this year to monitor the project and attempt to keep it under budget.
VERITAS is just the most extreme example of the collateral damage these stresses are beginning to cause. There were also proposed cuts and delays to the Dragonfly mission to Titan and the Geospatial Dynamics Constellation meant to study interactions between the upper atmosphere and the Sun.
These ballooning flagship mission costs are combined with other stresses within NASA to jeopardize multiple critically-important science missions and even risk international ties with foreign space agencies.
It’s clear a budget request surpassing inflation, in the 8-9% increase range, would be necessary to keep NASA fully on track.
Yet an increase of any type may be the last thing Congress has in mind.
Congressional Spotlight
Over the last few decades NASA’s budget approvals from Congress have become less frequent and longer in length, and this corresponds to an increase in partisan polarization.
This analysis by The Space Review does a masterful job highlighting these trends, and their analysis is perhaps best summed up with this line:
“Prior to 1994, Congress had missed just three authorizations over the previous 21 years. Since then, they have passed only six.” Drier & Eastman, the Space Review
As Congress has become more polarized, the budget process has broken down, and NASA has not been immune.
After the 2022 midterm elections Congress became split, with new Republican leaders taking power in the House while Democrats maintained control of the Senate. Congressional response to NASA’s budget has been mixed, with initial bipartisan approval under sharp pressure from broader political forces.
The budget cycle began with promising indicators, with Committee leaders in both the House and Senate indicating support for a standalone multi-year NASA authorization.
Such a development would be highly beneficial, granting the agency increased long-term budget certainty, but it’s unclear how long-lived these efforts may be.
New Leaders Carve Out New Roles as Partisanship Seeps In
After some initial delays, Congress finally sorted out the various Committee and Sub-Committee Chairperson roles that so often dictate the specific shape of NASA’s budget.
Congressman Hal Rogers (R-KY) is the Chairman of the House Appropriations Sub-Committee for Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies, which has jurisdiction over NASA’s budget.
Rogers has long been a NASA supporter, calling the agency an “inspiration maker (and) dream realizer,” and one of the first meetings he took as Subcommittee Chair was with NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.
Congressman Brian Babin (R-TX) is the Chairman of the House Science Committee Space & Aeronautics Sub-Committee, which has broader authority over NASA and national space policy.
Babin represents NASA’s Johnson Space Center and has long been a supporter of NASA and the crewed spaceflight program.
Congressman Frank Lucas (R-OK) is the Chairman of the overall House Science Committee, and has spoken favorably about NASA in the past, and prioritized a stand-alone NASA authorization when he took the gavel earlier this year.
It’s worth noting that Congressmen Lucas and Babin sent a letter to Administrator Nelson in early April inquiring about the largely remote workforce at NASA Headquarters despite much of the federal government returning to in-person work.
There was also a notably partisan tone at a May 16th Senate Budget Hearing, where Republicans Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Eric Schmidt (R-MO) were sharply critical of a proposed NASA rule on CO2 emissions and what Schmidt referred to as “woke” diversity initiatives.
These non-budgetary issues bear monitoring for any last-minute amendments or partisan squabbles that complicate negotiations. A rise in overt partisanship in NASA budget making would be a decidedly unwelcome turn of events for American space policy.
Broader Dynamics Threaten Painful Cuts
While all three of these new Committee leaders would be considered pro-space, there are significant new budget pressures coming from the broader Republican party that set up direct conflicts when it comes to funding NASA.
The new House Republican caucus is heavily invested in budget cutting, with Speaker Kevin McCarthy only winning his gavel after extensive negotiations with the House Freedom Caucus centered around budgetary promises.
The Rules package they adopted makes McCarthy unusually vulnerable to their demands, and includes specific pledges to cap federal spending at Fiscal Year 2022 levels.
On April 26th the House passed the Republicans initial debt ceiling/budget bill by an ultra-slim 217 to 215 margin. While not listing specific cuts to NASA, the bill slashes billions of dollars in federal spending and honors the FY 2022 levels the House Freedom Caucus insisted on when McCarthy became Speaker.
The Democratic Senate and President Biden immediately made clear the bill was Dead on Arrival and would be vetoed, but many Republicans are saying it is the “bare minimum” they expect from any compromise.
The chasm between the two sides is already significant and only looks to grow larger as the federal budget and debt ceiling deadlines rush ever closer.
It’s also important to note that the ‘behind-the-scenes’ dynamics for NASA may not be optimal this year.
It was noted that this proposed budget slashes Heliophysics programs important to Senate Appropriations Commerce-Justice-Science Committee Chairwoman Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), which can cause pushback and budgetary conflict.
There have been numerous departures of senior staffers who work on NASA-related issues, and none of the top 8 Appropriations Members of Congress represents a NASA facility. While not the top factors at play, these less visible changes don’t help NASA’s case in Congress this year.
NASA has been cognizant of these new Congressional dynamics for some time, and warned earlier this year that their budget request would face more challenges this year.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson warned of the “devastating and potentially unrecoverable” impacts of significant budget cuts to NASA in line with the FY2022 levels Republicans are proposing, including, “significant delays or cancellations to Artemis IV… [as well as] Mars Sample Return, the DaVinci mission to Venus, and the Dragonfly mission to Titan.”
Administrator Nelson has testified extensively in front of Congress this spring, warning of dangerous cuts and promoting NASA’s upcoming Artemis II mission to the Moon. He testified to the full House Science Committee on April 27th, and explained the repercussions of any type of funding cut from minute 33 to minute 37 (full video here).
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson testifies to Congress, May 2022. Source: NASA.
It’s clear that there is tension between the pro-space attitudes of the new leaders on NASA-relevant Congressional Committees and the budgetary priorities of the wider House Republican Conference.
How these two forces reconcile themselves may be the single most important factor shaping NASA’s budget this year.
Debt Fight a Growing Threat to Space Industry
Looming large over the standard annual budget squabbles is a new and potentially dangerous threat: debt default.
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has warned that the federal government will reach its borrowing limit as early as June 1st. If Congress fails to raise the nation's debt limit, the US government will default on its debt for the first time in history.
While seemingly unrelated, such a move would have potentially significant impacts on NASA and the US space economy. The White House has warned of numerous consequences, including:
“...the ability of households and businesses, especially small businesses, to borrow through the private sector to offset this economic pain would also be compromised. The risks engendered by the default would cause interest rates to skyrocket, including those on the financial instruments that households and businesses use—Treasury bonds, mortgages, and credit card interest rates.”
Analysts from Moody’s Analytics are equally alarmed about the consequences of a US debt default:
“...the economic downturn that would ensue would be comparable to that suffered during the global financial crisis…real GDP would decline…costing the economy more than 7 million jobs. Stock prices would fall by almost a fifth at the worst of the selloff, wiping out $10 trillion in household wealth. Treasury yields, mortgage rates, and other consumer and corporate borrowing rates would spike, at least until the debt limit is resolved and Treasury payments resume.”
These shocks would reverberate sharply through the US space ecosystem and the space industry could immediately face significant pressures from higher interest rates and other economic shocks.
If the US Treasury Department has to halt government payments, that will inevitably hit NASA’s coffers, although the specific chain of events remains unclear.
Will NASA be forced to delay payments to suppliers in the event of a debt default and the Treasury stops paying bills? How severely could this delay the Artemis schedule? What will the long term impacts be on both private industry and NASA?
Congressional leaders and President Biden are just beginning to meet on the issue, continuing Washington’s cycle of debt brinkmanship. Space advocates should hope they reach an agreement before June and defuse the situation, as a debt default would be uniquely catastrophic for the entire US space ecosystem.
Public Support for NASA Remains Robust, Will Congress Listen?
Years of polling data makes clear that the American public has long had a positive view of NASA and space exploration in general. This approval has often been bi-partisan, one of the few major policy areas in American society in which both parties generally agree.
Equal shares of 2020 Trump & Biden voters believe “Space missions are a good use of taxpayer money,” according to a March 2023 poll from Yahoo News/YouGov, perhaps one of the very few issues such similarities would be found.
Source: Yahoo News/YouGov March 16-20, 2023
Interestingly enough, the overall Yes/No breakdown is only 40%-36%, implying that 2020 non-voters have a much poorer view of spending taxpayer money on space missions.
A YouGov/Economist poll from April 2023 found majorities of Americans support sending crewed missions to both the Moon and Mars. Interestingly they favor the Moon (64%) over Mars (57%), which is in contrast to other recent polls. There is a notable gender gap as well, with men viewing the missions more favorably overall, although women are also generally supportive.
Source: Economist/YouGov April 21-25 2023
Recent polling data continues to highlight bi-partisan support for NASA and space exploration. Does Congress care?
Tense Summer on Tap for NASA
All of these various dynamics have led to perhaps the most tense and unpredictable NASA budget cycle in some time.
New Congressional leaders have new priorities, and a push for budget austerity could bring serious impacts to NASA. The growing threat of a debt limit crisis adds new uncertainty, while the behind the scenes dynamics are doing the agency no favors. A more partisan tone in Committee hearings bears watching for potential surprises.
Yet the public remains steadfastly pro-NASA and supports its’ mission, which may yet break through the noise and spare the agency the worst case scenarios.
Patrick Chase is a space writer, political junkie, and lifelong space enthusiast.
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