Tag: budget

India’s space budget remains stable

8:54 am

India this year has budgeted $1.2 billion for ISRO, the government agency that runs its space program.

The most astonishing thing I learned from this article however was this tidbit:

The total, presented to the parliament Feb. 28, is roughly level with the 2014-15 budget presented last year. However, ISRO typically spends significantly less money than is allocated in any given budget year — for 2014-15 it spent just 58 billion rupees of the 72 billion rupee allocation — so it seems likely that spending in the coming year will fall short of 73.9 billion rupees. ISRO spokesman Deviprasad Karnik acknowledged the possibility that ISRO’s budget will be reduced before the end of the year. [emphasis mine]

Who ever heard of any government agency in the United States routinely spending less than its budget. The idea is unheard of!

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Boehner had made a deal with Pelosi

5:45 pm

Despite claiming that there had been no deal, John Boehner had negotiated a deal with the Democratic Party leadership to get a funding bill passed that also funded Obama’s illegal amnesty.

If there isn’t a successful revolt in the Republican Party to get Boehner replaced as Speaker, than that party will fall apart, giving more even power to the Democrats. It is unacceptable for a Republican leader to back stab his own caucus like this, and for them to accept it is as unacceptable.

Meanwhile, here are the names of the 75 House Republicans who backed the Democrats and Boehner in this back stab. I think I’d rather have Marxist Democrats in these seats than two-faced RINOs who say one thing during campaigns and then do another once elected. At least with the Marxist Democrats we’d know what we’ve got, and we can blame them when things go wrong. These Republican liars however have instead created the illusion that the left wing agenda of Obama and the Democrats is a bi-partisan effort.

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Homeland funding bill fails

5:49 pm

Good! A large number of conservative Republicans combined with most House Democrats to defeat a cobbled-together three week funding bill for Homeland Security.

As of midnight tonight many Homeland employees will either be furloughed, or have to work without pay (if their job is deemed essential).

The Republican leadership continues to brainwash itself into thinking a government shutdown will hurt them at the ballot box, when all the evidence from recent elections says exactly the opposite. After the 2013 shutdown the press screamed “Republicans did it!” as if it was a bad thing but the voters rewarded the Republicans one of its biggest landslides in almost a century in 2014. If anything, shutting the government down appeared to help the Republicans win elections. The public wants the government brought under control. Moreover, every shutdown helps prove how useless and unneeded that government is, the exact position conservatives have been touting for decades.

Let Homeland Security shut down. We didn’t need it for more than 225 years, and we don’t need it now.

Update: Congress has hurriedly passed a seven-day funding bill for Homeland Security.

The AP story linked above does the usual media hatchet job of spinning the story to make it all sound like the Republicans caused all the problems. As far as I am concerned, the failure here is the fact that not enough Republicans stood firm. A majority did, but we are still stuck with that handful of fake Republicans, such as Hatch, McCain, Flake, and Graham, that screw conservatives every time.

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What happens if Homeland Security shuts down?

6:03 pm

Not much it appears.

Salmon and a few other conservatives are the only ones saying it publicly so far, but the reality is that a department shutdown would have a very limited impact on national security. That’s because most department employees fall into exempted categories of workers who stay on the job in a shutdown because they perform work considered necessary to protect human life and property. Even in a shutdown, most workers across agencies, including the Secret Service, Transportation Security Administration, Federal Emergency Management Agency and Customs and Border Protection, would continue to report to work. Airport security checkpoints would remain staffed, the Secret Service would continue to protect the president and other dignitaries, the Coast Guard would stay on patrol, immigration agents would still be on the job.

Indeed, of the agency’s approximately 230,000 employees, some 200,000 of them would keep working even if Congress fails to fund their agency. It’s a reality that was on display during the 16-day government-wide shutdown in the fall of 2013, when national parks and monuments closed but essential government functions kept running, albeit sometimes on reduced staff.

In other words, the cries of disaster, mostly from Democrats and from a few in the wimpy Republican leadership, are the same bull we heard prior to sequestration and the previous government shutdown. From a political point of view, the Republicans have nothing to lose politically by letting this agency run out of funds, and everything to gain.

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Republicans to stand firm on blocking Obama’s illegal over-reach on immigration?

10:01 am

“There is no plan B”

The Republicans, including Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.), are vowing to hold the line on tying funding for the Homeland Security Department to language reversing Obama’s executive actions on immigration — even after Senate Democrats blocked their bill from being considered in the upper chamber. “There’s not a Plan B, because this is the plan,” Scalise said minutes after the Senate vote, according to Fox News’s Chad Pergram. Rep. John Fleming (R-La.) echoed that message, saying “many of us agree that we should stand behind the one bill that we sent over there.” “Most of us feel that way,” he said just before the Senate vote. “Anything less than that, we’re not going to get any better result anyway. So why not just go for what’s really right?”

Tuesday’s Senate vote was 51-48 to end debate on the House-passed Homeland Security bill — far shy of the 60 supporters GOP leaders needed to move to a vote on final passage. Every Senate Democrat voted against proceeding to the package, as did Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.).

If no agreement is reached than funds for Homeland Security run out on February 28. And I say amen! Homeland Security provides us no safety or security in the war against violent Islam, and has instead worked to destroy the very things that make us different from the dictators of the Old World: freedom and the power of the individual over the power of the state. Let it shut down. We had no shut KGB-type agency for the country’s first 225 years and we don’t need it now.

Whether the Republicans will have the courage to actually let Homeland Security shut down, however, is the real question. Since the government shutdowns in the 1990s they have shown themselves to be very fearful of the blowback from any government shutdown, even though there is no evidence in recent years that these shutdowns have hurt them. The liberal press might scream that the public blames the Republicans only, but that is ridiculous, since every shutdown was a team effort by both parties.

In fact, the shutdown two years ago probably contributed to the Republican midterm election triumph in November. If anything, it certainly did them no harm.

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Ocean science deals with limited budgets

9:45 am

A National Research Council report has outlined a range of budget cuts in the field of ocean science, including significant cuts to infrastructure expenses, in order to focus the available funds more wisely.

Faced with rising costs of going to sea, the ocean-sciences division of the US National Science Foundation (NSF) should immediately slash what it spends on marine hardware, says a new report. It suggests making the biggest cut to the flagship US$386-million Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI), which after years of construction is just months away from being finished.

The report, released on 23 January by the US National Research Council, is likely to guide US oceanography for years to come. It is the first formal attempt to address what many researchers have grumbled about for years — that basic ocean science at the NSF is losing out to the rising costs of infrastructure.

This report and the response of the ocean science community illustrates a pattern going on throughout the sciences. For years, their budgets had been rising so fast that they really didn’t know what to do with the money. (I know they would disagree with me.) This resulted in some laziness in how they spent it, including a great deal of feather-bedding and pork.

Now that budgets have frozen and are no longer growing, and in many cases shrinking back to more affordable levels, they need to figure out what is essential and what is not. This report is part of that effort.

I am seeing this same process happening in other fields as well. Santa, in the form of unlimited federal spending, has gone home, and is unexpected to return for quite some time.

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IRS chief warns of bad service due to budget cuts

9:18 am

IRS Commissioner (and Democratic Party shill) John Koskinen has warned in an agency-wide email that the tax agency faces a short-term shutdown and increased bad taxpayer service because of Republican-led budget cuts.

“The effect of these cuts will hurt taxpayers and our tax system,” he wrote. He said the cuts could force the IRS to shut down operations for two days later this year, resulting in unpaid furloughs for employees and service cuts for taxpayers. But in the near-term, the commissioner said cuts in overtime and temporary staff hours could cause delays in refunds. “People who file paper tax returns could wait an extra week — or possibly longer — to see their refund,” he wrote, adding: “Taxpayers with errors or questions on their returns that require additional manual review will also face delays.”

Why am I reminded of the claims of federal agency heads everywhere just before sequestration, claiming doom and gloom should it take effect? None of their claims proved true. Sequestration did nothing to harm government operations and actually saved the taxpayers a load of money.

Koskinen is full of it. This email by him is only intended to pressure Congress to give him more money, so that his agency can continue to abuse anyone who might express opinions hostile to the Democratic Party.

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Cruz and Rubio to chair important space and science subcommittees

3:40 pm

We are about to find out how conservative and pro-private enterprise senators Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Marco Rubio (R-Florida) really are. Both have been assigned as chairmen of important subcommittees managing NASA and NOAA.

Cruz will chair the subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness, which handles NASA, while Rubio will chair the subcommittee that handles NOAA.

For Cruz especially this position will challenge him to prove his tea party credentials. If he is in favor of private space as much as he claims, we will see him work to trim SLS, a pork project with no hope of achieving anything in space, and favor the commercial space effort, even though SLS brings much more pork into his state.

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NASA builds a $349 million test stand it knows it will never need

11:58 pm

SLS marches on! Though Obama cancelled the Constellation rocket program in 2010, NASA continued to build a $349 million engine test stand for that rocket, finishing the tower in June 2014.

The test stand was also significantly over budget. It now sits useless, since the SLS rocket will use a different untested engine in its upper stage during its first manned flight.

It is every important to underline the chronology here. The rocket was cancelled in 2010. Construction on the test stand continued however for four more years, partly because of decisions by NASA management and partly because of mandates forced on them by Congress.

Stories like this illustrate why I think the political clout of SLS is weak. The program is too expensive, is riddled with waste, and it can’t accomplish anything anyway, making it a perfect target for both muckraking journalists and elected officials who want to make a name for themselves saving the taxpayer’s money. And both have a perfect inexpensive and successful alternative to turn to: private space.

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A new Russian heavy lift rocket amid Russian budget woes

10:18 am

The competition heats up: Even as Russia today successfully placed a commercial satellite in orbit on the 400th successful Proton rocket launch, Russian sources indicate that — despite budget woes fueled by the drop in oil prices — Russia is moving ahead with the design and construction of a heavy-lift rocket capable of competing with NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS).

From the last link above:

By 2013, Roskosmos drafted a very preliminary roadmap toward the development of heavy and super-heavy launch vehicles. Not surprisingly, it matched closely the strategy that NASA had followed since 2011 within the Space Launch System, SLS, project.

…As the American SLS project, Russian super-heavy launcher plans envisioned building a rocket with a payload of 80-85 tons in the first phase of the program. A pair of such rockets would be enough to mount a lunar expedition. In the second phase of development, the rocket would be upgraded to carry unprecedented 130-180 tons of payload in order to support, permanent lunar bases, missions to asteroids and expeditions to Mars.

As much as I remain a skeptic of SLS, it has apparently struck so much competitive fear in the Russian leadership that they are now willing to try to copy it. Much like the 1980s, when the Soviet rulers bankrupted their nation trying to duplicate American projects like the Strategic Defense Initiative and the Space Shuttle, Putin is now repeating that error all over again. His country has experienced almost a quarter-century of strong economic growth since the fall of communism because, during that time, they focused on capitalism, private enterprise, freedom, and a bottom-up economic structure. Now, they are beginning to abandon that approach and return to the top-down, centralized system of government planning.

As it did in previous century, it will bankrupt them again in this century. Though the Russian government is denying the reports that they are going to trim their space budget, their government’s budget is going to suffer from the drop in the price of oil. Something will have to give.

Update: This review of a book about modern Russia is definitely pertinent: The Land of Magical Thinking: Inside Putin’s Russia

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Another reasonable look at this week’s Congressional budget deal.

10:53 am

Link here.

Mitchell correctly notes that this deal occurred because of the reality of divided government. While Republican leaders have often acted like weak-kneed wimps, there still remains a limit on how much they can get, not controlling two-thirds of the government. As I noted earlier in discussing the science budget, the federal budget is no longer growing uncontrollably, evidence that the voters’ wishes from 2010 and 2014 are beginning to be heeded.

Only when we have elected more conservatives will it then start to shrink.

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A more positive conservative take on the budget deal

10:48 am

Link here. I think Lambo nails it. The deal might not be ideal, but it is only the beginning, and was written when Republicans only control one house of Congress, and still pushes back at many Democratic-passed initiatives.

Next year that changes. If we do not see significant cuts in the budget from Republicans when they control both houses of Congress I will then join the many conservatives who justly distrust the Republican leadership and want their heads.

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No more Russian engines for ULA

10:34 am

The heat of competition: The new budget, passed by the House yesterday, includes a provision both banning ULA from buying any more Russian engines for its Atlas 5 rockets as well as providing $220 million to help develop a new engine.

Combined with the likely approval of SpaceX to also launch military payloads, ULA is under significant pressure to get those Russian engines replaces as quickly as possible.

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NIH panel recommends cancelling multi-billion dollar study

10:13 am

An government advisory panel has recommended the NIH cancel a controversial nationwide study to track the health of 100,000 children.

The study has already cost one billion, has had two scientists resign because they didn’t like how the study was being run, and has as yet only enrolled 4,000 children.

Update: The NIH officially cancelled the study later the same day the panel’s report was released.

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Science spending steady in proposed Congressional budget

9:18 am

The proposed budget deal announced by Congress yesterday essentially leaves level the overall spending on science.

I have a spreadsheet where I track the budgets of the various science agencies in the federal government, and from this I can say that since the Republicans took control of the House in 2010 the funding has remained very steady. Despite the partisan screams from the left that Republicans are destroying science, all these science agencies have pretty much gotten stable funding in the past four years.

Nonetheless, much of this funding could be trimmed significantly, as there is enormous featherbedding and pork among these science agencies. That won’t have a chance of happening until next year, when the Republicans control both houses of Congress. Even then, Obama and much of the Republican leadership will oppose significant cuts, Obama because he wants to see increases and the Republican leadership because they wish to maintain the status quo.

The unending growth in these budgets, routine from the 1970s through the 2000s, has definitely ceased. I also expect the political pressure to cut these budgets to grow with time. The newer Republican members of Congress tend to be much more radical than their leadership, and are much more willing to slash budgets radically.

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Lame duck Congress agrees to $1.1 trillion budget

5:03 pm

Faced with the threat of a government shutdown, Congress has worked out a continuing resolution that will fund the government through its fiscal year ending in September 2015.

There has been a lot of gnashing of teeth among conservatives about this deal. Many wanted the Republicans to fight harder now and limit this deal more. I am less worried. The political winds are clearly favoring conservatives and tea party ideals. Come next year Congress will be controlled by Republicans, and the 2016 budget will be shaped by their concerns. Whatever small gains the Democrats and Obama get now will be stymied then.

And then will come the 2016 elections. I expect an even greater win for conservatives, since Obama is making it clear he will continue to stand firm in support of Obamacare and many other liberal issues that have proved to be poison at the ballot box.

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Orion launch on Thursday given go-ahead

1:30 pm

The Thursday test launch of an Orion capsule has been given the go-ahead.

Many of the news reports this week about this test flight have referred to Orion as “the spacecraft that will take humans to Mars.” I must note again that this is hogwash. No humans will ever go to Mars using Orion. It is too small and does not have the capacity to keep humans healthy and alive for the year-plus-long flight time necessary to get to and from Mars.

The most Orion can ever be is the ascent and descent module for a much larger interplanetary space vessel, used just for getting humans up and down from the surface of the Earth. The spacecraft that will really take people to Mars will have to be something more akin to Mir or ISS, a large assembly of modules put together in low Earth orbit.

One other tidbit everyone should know about tomorrow’s test flight: Though it is being touted as a test of Orion’s heat shield, the company that makes this heat shield has already abandoned this design, so the test itself is for a heat shield that will never be launched again on another Orion capsule. In addition, the flight won’t test the rocket to be used, as the SLS rocket isn’t ready. Nor will it test the capsule’s life support systems, which are not on board.

Which immediately raises the question: Why in hell is NASA even bothering with this test flight?

Sadly, I can answer that question. This is all public relations, an effort to lobby for funding. That’s it.

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