About Face: DOD, NASA Marching to a Different Drummer President Obama’s 2011 budget proposal would reverse Bush administration policies on outsourcing and space exploration, lopping off tens of thousands of contractor jobs. The $3.8 trillion budget would freeze most non-security spending for three years and cut or kill more than 120 federal programs that the administration believes are wasteful, duplicative or unnecessary. The president’s proposal is just a starting point; critics in Congress are ramping up to save their pet programs. Defense Insourcing Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the department’s $708 billion budget request represents “a fundamental overhaul in our approach to procurement, acquisition and contracting.” DOD plans to hire 19,800 civilian personnel in 2010 and ‘11 to replace contractors. Many of the new hires will be in acquisition-related jobs. These are the first steps toward Gates’s goal of reducing contractor participation from 39% of the department’s workforce to 26%, which he says was the level before the Bush administration began outsourcing jobs. Under the budget Defense Department procurement would increase by 7.7% next year to nearly $113 billion. But spending on military construction and family housing would be reduced. In developing major weapons systems, Gates said, “we are working to achieve predictable cost, schedule and performance outcomes, based on mature, demonstrated technologies and realistic cost/schedule estimates.” He proposes buying no more C-17 transport aircraft—Congress rejected that last year—and dropping the Navy’s CGX cruiser. The Army Corps of Engineers would no longer build water and wastewater treatment plants; DOD says those projects are outside the Corps’ main mission. The budget would end the Net Enabled Command Capability program because it is “highly unlikely to be completed on schedule.” Forget the Moon President Obama proposes killing NASA’s Constellation program, the effort to build rockets and crew capsules for a return trip to the moon. NASA has spent about $9 billion on contracts with Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Alliant Techsystems and others. It would cost an additional $2.5 billion to shut down the program. In a reversal of five decades of space policy, NASA would buy tickets for future astronauts to ride on rockets developed by private industry. That was a recommendation of a presidentially appointed advisory panel headed by former Lockheed CEO Norman Augustine. Members of Congress from Florida, Texas and Alabama—homes of the largest NASA centers—say they will fight the plan. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-AL, said, “The president’s proposed NASA budget begins the death march for the future of U.S. human spaceflight.” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden acknowledged, “To people who are working on these programs, this is like a death in the family.” Speaking Feb. 2 at the National Press Club in Washington, he added, “For any of you who think we are abandoning human space flight, I just respectfully disagree.” The budget includes $6 billion over five years for private companies to develop manned space vehicles plus additional funds for R&D on new space technologies. However, the administration has not said where those rockets would go, beyond the International Space Station. Bolden said NASA will award about $50 million to companies that are developing the “taxis” to low Earth orbit. The companies are: Blue Origin of Kent, WA; Boeing Co.of Houston; Paragon Space Development Corp. of Tucson, AZ; Sierra Nevada Corp. of Louisville, CO; and United Launch Alliance of Centennial, CO (a partnership of Boeing and Lockheed), for the development of crew concepts, technology demonstrations, and investigations for future commercial support of human spaceflight. IT Spending Flat The budget would provide $79 billion for IT projects, 1.2% less than in 2010. It calls for creation of central data centers for civilian agencies, which the budget document says could save billions of dollars. The administration wants to consolidate the 1,100 separate federal data centers. R&D Funding Up The budget allocates $62.6 billion for civilian research in basic sciences, including clean energy, biomedicine and advanced electric grid. In future years the administration says it will double R&D funding for the National Science Foundation, National Institute of Science and Technology and the Energy Department’s Office of Science. Acquisition Workforce The budget includes funding to hire new acquisition workers. The administration has said it wants civilian agencies to expand their staffs by 5%. The budget also allocates $25 million for training those workers. White House Budget Director Peter Orszag said the size of the acquisition workforce has remained stable while contract spending has more than doubled.