NASA still ordered to waste $1.4 million a day

Mark K. Matthews

Orlando Sentinel

Washington Bureau

6:47 PM EDT, March 23, 2011

WASHINGTON — Congress has again failed to rid a temporary spending bill of language forcing NASA to waste $1.4 million a day on its defunct Constellation moon program.

Though Congress passed a new stopgap spending bill last week, the measure retained a leftover provision from the 2010 budget that bars the agency from shutting down Constellation, which Congress and the White House agreed to cancel last October.

This so-called "Shelby provision" — named for U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Alabama, who inserted it into the 2010 budget — is expected to cost NASA roughly $29 million during the three-week budget extension through April 8. It has already cost the agency nearly $250 million since Oct. 1.

Equally galling to budget hawks is that Congress has known about the mistake for months and has done nothing to correct it.

"It's like a dripping faucet, eventually it will fill up the sink," said Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a non-partisan spending watchdog. "This is just a case of congressional inertia failing to take care of the problem — at a cost to taxpayers."

It all started last summer, when Congress failed to pass a budget for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. Instead, it approved a continuation of the 2010 budget — and has kept extending it while struggling to reach agreement on a spending plan for the rest of this fiscal year.

In January, NASA Inspector General Paul Martin urged "immediate action" to stop the spending on Constellation, much of which goes to Utah-based solid-rocket manufacturer ATK. Martin said it would cost an estimated $215 million through the end of February.

Since then, though, Congress has passed two "continuing resolutions" — each with the Shelby language.

More than two months ago, U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., vowed to cut the language: "Given that every dime counts in our space program right now, we can't afford to be wasting money," Nelson said Jan. 13. He repeated the promise during a NASA hearing last week.

But the language is still there. Asked why, a Nelson spokesman blamed "partisan politics."

"There's no reason for the spending provision that's putting NASA in a jam, other than partisan politics over a broader government spending measure," said Bryan Gulley. "And there's no real opposition to Sen. Nelson's proposal to remove the language in question, except that lawmakers aren't able to agree on longer-term budget cuts. Still, Sen. Nelson is convinced the problem will be fixed, and soon."

Industry and congressional sources attributed the failure to the fact that the amount of money involved simply wasn't enough to attract the attention of congressional leaders.

"Maybe $1 million a day isn't a big deal when you have a $1.6 trillion [federal] deficit," said Thomas Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste, a non-partisan budgetary watchdog. But, he added, that's "not the kind of decision any normal organization would make."

At recent congressional hearings, NASA officials have said they were doing their best to steer the Constellation money toward the agency's next big project: a heavy-lift rocket that one day could take astronauts to the moon and beyond.

When pressed, however, Doug Cooke, the agency's head of exploration systems, said NASA "would be happy and less constrained without the restrictions."