Intern Insight #7 by OSC's student intern Chad McElroy:
Working in Washington, D.C., is showing me how the budgetary process impacts decision-making for agencies as large as NASA and as small as college student governments.
Federal agencies generally depend on annual Congressional appropriations for funding, which encourages agencies to prioritize their programs in accordance with anticipated budgets and the surrounding fiscal environment. As budgets can fluctuate year-to-year, agencies must sometimes make decisions that save money in the short-term, yet are not necessarily beneficial in the medium or long-term.
A recent example is NASA’s cancellation of the VIPER rover, a mission that would have searched for water ice at the Moon’s south pole after being delivered by a Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) lander. While the rover may have unearthed important scientific insights, NASA found itself unable to support the mission in light of other priorities.
This reminded me of my time in student government back at Claremont McKenna College, where as a chairman for our Senate Administrative Affairs and Appropriations committee, I often had to make case-by-case decisions on student budget requests that were dependent on, and highly restricted by, the Senate’s overall budget. Now working in a government agency, I can see how the same dynamics can apply, albeit with a much larger budget!
