Program Administration 



A series of steps in the budget process proceeds to legislative appropriation: 

 Centers, Division Director, OSSA, NASA Administrator, Office of Management 

 and Budget (OMB), and Congress. At each step, the Life Sciences budget is 

 subject to change, typically to decreases because proposed new projects are 

 ultimately prioritized within many disciplines and not approved. 



Over time, the Life Sciences Division has emerged with about 5 percent of the 

 OSSA budget. The largest impacts on the proposed budget figure occurred before 

 submission to OMB. During the past year, however, the Division's requests have 

 been supported by NASA. 



Additional but lesser cuts have usually been made in the proposed budget of the 

 Life Sciences Division as it moves to OMB. At OMB, the decrease is generally 

 part of a total reduction in the NASA budget. 



Because congressional consideration of the budget is relatively well documented, 

 especially through publication of hearings, it is possible to describe the treatment 

 of the Life Sciences Division's proposal at the final level of decision. From FY 1983 

 through FY 1986, the NASA Administrator did not mention the Life Sciences 

 program specifically in his statement submitted as an overview of the budget 

 presentation. While other large projects were briefly described, no Division project 

 was proposed. 



Congressional actions on the Life Sciences programs reflected the budget requests 

 made by the Agency for FY 1985. (The authorization process is separate from the 

 appropriating process and represents another congressional perspective on the 

 program.) The final authorization that emerged from the conference committee 

 augmented various programs within OSSA. The budget for the Life Sciences 

 Division was not, however, increased. These results were in contrast to the 

 situations in 1977 and 1979, when budgets for Controlled Ecological Life Support 

 Systems (CELSS) and Spacelab flight experiments were requested by NASA and 

 approved by Congress. 



Program Implementation 



As the preceding discussion suggests, program implementation depends largely on 

 factors influencing budget appropriations. As with many other Federal agencies, 

 fiscal scarcity has been the driving force in much of NASA's program develop- 

 ment, constraining the way that the organization has set forth plans for the future. 

 Problems are compounded for programs of the Life Sciences Division because 

 each participating office has its own budget, often won in competition with other 

 offices involved in different projects and missions, and enjoys nearly complete 

 discretion over how its funds will be spent. 



Program planning for the Life Sciences Division is also complicated by uncer- 

 tainties in flight opportunities. For most researchers involved with NASA, the real 

 lure to participate in the Agency's work is the possibility of developing 

 experiments on space flights. In the wake of the Challenger accident, as the 



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