OMB Makes Its Recommendations

The strategy paper illuminated the consequences of various budget choices. It certainly influenced the OMB staff in its recommendations regarding the NASA FY1972 budget, with an OMB bias toward the lower budget options. The next step in the budget process was Don Rice’s presenta­tion to Cap Weinberger of his staff’s recommendations with respect to the NASA budget. This “director’s review” took place on November 3. Weinberger “tentatively decided” to accept the staff recommendation to terminate the Skylab program. Possible cancelation of Apollo 17, the final lunar landing mission, had been considered during the budget review, but the staff recommendation, which Weinberger accepted, was to continue with the mission.

Weinberger did approve a start on the new rocket engine intended for use in the space shuttle, but denied funding for moving forward on developing the shuttle’s airframe. Approving engine development was an important first step in eventual White House approval of the space shuttle, and sug­gested that some version of the shuttle was likely to get approval in the months to come. These and other decisions, particularly the cancelation of Skylab, brought the NASA budget recommended by the OMB staff down to $2.8 billion in budget authority and $2.7 billion in FY1972 outlays. The latter figure was some $700 million below what NASA had requested and almost $500 million less than the budget target that had been provided to NASA a few months earlier. The NASA unit in OMB, led by Don Rice, was clearly setting itself up as a counterforce to NASA’s already diminished post-Apollo aspirations. Although he tentatively approved the staff recom­mendations, Weinberger wanted a better sense of the context in which they were being made. He thus requested a more detailed analysis, taking into account “agency priorities, unemployment consequences and Soviet initia­tives.”16

The proceedings of the director’s review were not supposed to be known outside the White House and Executive Office of the President. But the Space Council’s Bill Anders attended the review meeting and on a very con­fidential basis called NASA’s Low to communicate its results. In addition, Bill Lilly, NASA’s budget chief, got feedback from some of the career budget staff. Based on this information, Low judged that while Rice and the OMB career staff were “quite negative to our programs,” Weinberger had “care­fully read our letters and is, in fact, trying to get a detailed understanding of the issues involved in the NASA budget.” In addition to calling Low, Anders wrote a letter to Weinberger in support of the Skylab program. This may have been the beginning of Anders’s relationship with Weinberger; over the following months Anders served as Weinberger’s unofficial space advi­sor, providing an informed view independent of the information and rec­ommendations the OMB deputy director was getting from his staff. This relationship gave Anders a way to have an impact on major space decisions. Anders found in Weinberger an individual who appreciated the value to the nation of a vigorous space effort; he took every opportunity to nurture that appreciation.17