FY 1996 Budget Request: NASA - Overview
President Clinton’s fiscal year 1996 budget request gives NASA a total of $14.26 billion. This is $203.7 million, or 1.4 percent, less than the space agency’s current year budget.
NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin summarized both the good and bad news in his February 6 budget briefing. “This FY 1996 budget request...will allow us to deliver a strong aeronautics and space program that’s relevant to America,” he said, but “the tough news is that...we’ll be taking a cut of nearly $5 billion over the next five years.” The Administration’s plans call for a NASA budget of only $13 billion by the end of the century. “Make no mistake,” Goldin warned, “when this is over, NASA will be profoundly different. We’re going to restructure the agency.”
Even with a decreasing budget, NASA maintains President Clinton’s dual themes of reducing costs while investing in the future. NASA has started a “New Millennium” program to develop a fleet of small spacecraft “about a tenth of the cost and a tenth of the weight of today’s spacecraft.” Another new initiative is a reusable launch vehicle to replace the space shuttle.
Funding for NASA’s Human Space Flight account would remain essentially flat (decreasing by 0.1 percent), with the space station program also staying about flat. The Science, Aeronautics and Technology account, which includes space science, would grow by 1.1 percent; Mission Support would grow by 5.3 percent. Goldin said NASA intended to allow opportunities for new missions in the 5-year budget profile by including a “budget wedge,” starting at $10 million in fiscal 1996, for which no use is specified. Questioned about where he would find funding for Gravity Probe B if it receives approval from the National Academy of Sciences (which is currently reviewing the project), Goldin replied that NASA “will make the resources available” from the rest of the budget. Details of funding for selected NASA accounts will be provided in a future FYI.
Funding cuts in recent years have already reduced NASA’s budget by 30 percent, shrinking the agency and eliminating low-priority programs. “The American people have spoken,” Goldin announced, “and they want a NASA that does more with less.” Although not ready to specify exactly how the agency will achieve its budget objectives, he reported that NASA is currently undergoing a top-to-bottom review “to determine where to cut.” Goldin noted that NASA’s infrastructure was intended, in the early 1990s, for a growing agency with a projected end-of-the-century budget of $43 billion rather than $13 billion. “Everything is on the table,” he said, including downsizing or eliminating facilities and field centers, and combining operations with DOD at some bases. He added that “we also intend to make NASA less of an operations agency and more of an R&D agency.” Asked whether this meant reducing NASA’s efforts in space, Goldin replied no; he hoped to reduce operations by modernization and privatization.
