NASA Budget Review

The White House review of the budget NASA was requesting for Fiscal Year 1971 began in earnest on October 8, 1969, when NASA submitted a FY1971 budget request of $4.497 billion, an over $600 million increase from what President Nixon six months earlier had approved for FY1970. Thus began what the veteran official in charge of NASA’s budget prepara­tions, Bill Lilly, called “one of the most screwed-up operations anyone had ever seen in terms of how a budget was received and processed—the infight­ing between the White House staff and the Bureau of the Budget, [NASA] getting contrary directions from both sides, and it was a mixed up process all the way through.” Tom Paine characterized the budget review as “byzan­tine.” Decisions made during this budget review were of critical importance to NASA’s future, not just the next fiscal year but also beyond, since they could either support or reject the path forward set out in the STG report.9