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In a hastily announced conference call with Congressional offices, NASA said that it had just “discovered” a $1 billion shortfall in the Constellation program forcing contractors to immediately start shutting down operations in order to comply with NASA’s revision of long-standing accounting practices.

“This is one more attempt by this Administration to terminate a program that Congress specifically directed them to continue,” said Congressman Bill Posey.  “This effort is not only directly contrary to Congressional direction, but it is an affront to the hardworking NASA and contractor workforce. Clearly the Administration has mismanaged this program.”

Since the President’s budget was released in February which proposed terminating the Constellation program, NASA has claimed that it was not circumventing a Congressional directive that NASA continue to move forward with Constellation.  However, this announcement yesterday is the latest step in what seems to be a concerted effort by NASA to circumvent the law and start scaling down the Constellation program.

“Given that the Congress has yet to act on the President’s proposal and Constellation is the program of record, the Administration has an obligation to follow the law rather than find convenient excuses to change their practices to kill Constellation in the absence of Congressional consent.”