President Nixon Explains His NASA Budget Decisions

The meeting with the president that Administrator Paine had requested in his January 15 letter was set for 4:00 p. m. on January 22. Earlier that after­noon, the president had delivered his first State of the Union message to a joint session of the Congress. He had said “the Seventies will be a time of new beginnings, a time of exploring both on the earth and in the heavens,” but otherwise made no mention of the space program. As was standard prac­tice in preparing Nixon for a meeting, Flanigan composed a briefing memo­randum. He told Nixon that the purpose of the meeting was to allow Paine “to express his convictions regarding the importance of the Space Program as it relates to your Administration.” He added that Paine had taken the first two cuts in the NASA budget “in a spirit of complete cooperation.” But with regard to the final cut, “he did resist as he believed NASA was bearing a disproportionate share of the reduction.” Flanigan characterized Paine as “consistently loyal and cooperative.” He suggested that “no doubt you will wish to assure Dr. Paine of your personal interest in and support for the Space Program in the long run.”43

The Nixon-Paine meeting went off as scheduled; Ehrlichman as well as Flanigan were present. Nixon began the meeting by saying “how much he regretted having to make the last additional cuts in NASA’s ’71 budget. He understood these were very severe and he had done it most reluctantly,” but had no choice given the overall budget situation. He worried that “NASA might find it difficult to defend even this low space budget” against charges it represented misplaced priorities. The president said that “the polls and the people to whom he talked indicated to him that the mood of the people was for cuts in space and defense.” Nixon also said that the people of the country seem to think all they want is a nice environment and a turning-away from challenge and sacrifice. Even so, thought Nixon, there were areas like “sci­ence, space, and the SST [supersonic transport] the nation must put money into.”

Paine asked Nixon what he should tell the NASA workforce about the thinking behind the budget cuts. Nixon responded that the FY1971 NASA budget should be “rock bottom” and that he was “committed to the space program for the long-term future,” adding “we should have a strong space program and it should be on an increasing [budget] curve.” Paine’s conclu­sion after the meeting was that Nixon “honestly would like to support a more vigorous space program if he felt that the national mood favored it.” This seems to have been a valid reading of Nixon’s position; in the hours following his meeting with Paine, Nixon called Bob Haldeman, directing him to make sure that the message accompanying the release of the FY1971 budget would include “the flat statement ‘We shall plan to go to Mars.’”44

Conspicuously absent from discussions in the preceding weeks on the space budget was Tom Paine’s putative White House ally, Vice President Spiro Agnew. Paine had thought as the STG process went forward that Agnew’s recommendations would carry weight within the Nixon administration, and that Agnew as chair of the Space Council could play an ongoing role in space policy and budget decisions. By the end of the budget process, Paine cer­tainly recognized that these assumptions were not valid. Agnew had become marginalized in administration policy discussions, and the Space Council had not carved out a useful role. Thus it was of limited consolation for Paine to receive a January 30 memorandum from Agnew, saying that while the vice president could not fault the “decision to reduce all budgets in a fashion commensurate to absolute national requirements,” he was “concerned about our ability to maintain the high quality of performance that NASA enjoys.” Agnew told Paine “you may be assured that I will do whatever I can to per­suade the President to move the space program back to a more ambitious level at the earliest possible moment.” There was little to no chance that Agnew could be successful in such an undertaking.45

For 11 months, Thomas Paine had been depending on the work of the Agnew-led STG and the recommendations in its report to provide the char­ter for the bold space program he thought was in the nation’s, and NASA’s, interest during the post-Apollo period. He had consistently tried to use the report as a basis for arguing against cuts in the NASA budget. With the continued reduction in that budget, Paine’s aspirations were close to being dashed. In an almost plaintive sentence in his record of the meeting with President Nixon, Paine lamented “the President didn’t mention the Space Task Group Report.”46