Space Forum / Shuttle / June 2008

Until the Senate agrees to this and the White house concurs nothing is
settled...probably have to wait for the next President to have a
prayer of getting the AMS flight approved

Yawn, it's an authorization bill; wake me up when it's time for the
appropriations bill (which is currently making its way through the House
and Senate subcommittees).

Me suspects a lot of people are in for an unpleasant civics lesson.
Authorization bills state how much an agency is allowed to spend but the
appropriations bill gives them the actual money to spend. And there is
absolutely no obligation for Congress to appropriate the full amount
authorized. That is why the authorization bill passed the House so
overwhelmingly; talk is cheap, and the sponsors of this bill openly
admit it's little more than a "sense of the Congress" to try to
influence the next president. Compare for example the NASA Authorization
Act of 2005 (which covered FY2005-08) and the corresponding
appropriations bills from those years.

Authorization bills are a little more valuable than used toilet paper
but not quite as valuable as those "YOU may ALREADY be a WINNER!!!"
letters from the sweepstakes companies. They may in fact be worse, if
the authorization bill mandates an action that the subsequent
appropriations bill fails to fund. Just because the mandate is unfunded
doesn't mean the agency doesn't have to do it. If, say, the
authorization bill mandates an AMS shuttle flight, and the
appropriations bill doesn't add funds for it, NASA will have to raid
other accounts to pay for it.

For reference, the president requested $17.6 billion for NASA in FY09,
the appropriations bills (as currently drafted) $17.8 billion, and the
authorization bill $20.2 billion.