WASHINGTON — NASA and congressional officials are still grappling with the implications of a debt-ceiling agreement that enacts spending caps, but acknowledged it likely means the agency will get less money than it requested for 2024.
The Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023, signed into law by President Biden June 3, suspends the debt ceiling through the tip of 2024, allowing the federal government to proceed to borrow money and thus avoiding a fiscal crisis. As a part of the agreement to suspend the debt ceiling, the bill caps non-defense discretionary spending at 2023 levels for fiscal yr 2024 and increases that cap by 1% for 2025.
How those latest spending caps will affect spending for individual agencies stays uncertain, because the cap isn’t an across-the-board measure. Appropriators will get allocations for every of 12 spending bills, corresponding to the commerce, justice and science bill that features NASA, after which determine how you can distribute that funding amongst various agencies and departments.
NASA requested $27.185 billion in its fiscal yr 2024 budget proposal, a 7% increase over what it received in 2023. That full increase now appears unlikely with the brand new spending caps.
“We do must face the fact of the debt limit ceiling agreement and what might occur to our 2024 budget request,” said Pam Melroy, NASA deputy administrator, during a June 7 joint meeting of the National Academies’ Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board and Space Studies Board. “We recognize that it’s unlikely we’ll get the total request, and we all know that’s going to create challenges for us in the long run.”
She didn’t discuss specific challenges reduced spending will cause for NASA, but noted the agency will face “some hard decisions this yr.”
NASA had already faced some hard selections in the unique budget proposal, corresponding to delaying the beginning of a heliophysics mission, the Geospace Dynamics Constellation (GDC), to accommodate growing costs for Mars Sample Return. Chatting with the Space Studies Board June 8, Nicola Fox, NASA associate administrator for science and former director of the agency’s heliophysics division, which incorporates GDC, defended the choice to place that mission on hold.
“Yes, it’s disappointing with the constraints that the GDC mission needed to be placed on hold, but I feel it’s consistent with the priorities that were specified by the decadal,” she said, referring to essentially the most recent heliophysics decadal survey that prioritized research funding and smaller, competed missions.
She said there have been no underlying political messages in NASA’s decision to place GDC on hold or cut spending on technology development for the long run Habitable Worlds Observatory astrophysics flagship mission while increasing spending on planetary and Earth science.
“It’s easy to deal with what’s not within the budget, but there’s some really great things in there, too,” she said. “I don’t think there’s a political message in there. It’s just priorities.”
Ken Bowersox, NASA associate administrator for space operations, told a Space Transportation Association meeting June 8 it was too early to grasp how the budget caps might affect his directorate, which supports the International Space Station, business cargo and crew, and future business space stations.
“Even if you look where we’re at with the caps, it’s still so much,” he said of the budget. “What we might cut now, I couldn’t let you know.”
The implications of the spending caps are uncertain even in Congress. “What this implies for NASA isn’t completely clear yet,” Pamela Whitney, minority staff director on the House Science Committee’s space subcommittee, said on the National Academies meeting June 7. She noted that allocations for individual appropriations bills had not been released yet.
“I feel it’s fair to say there shall be stress,” she said, corresponding to the continued concerns about budgets for science missions. “This shall be difficult.”
