Government at it's best

-5...4...3...2...1... Liftoff for More Government Waste: One reason the national debt keeps getting worse is lack of cost discipline in government programs. Officials know that no matter how poorly they perform, Congress will always give them more money, while no one is ever fired for screwing up. If anything the incentive is to drag feet: Poor performance is rewarded with additional years of funding.

Case in point: NASA's preposterous Webb Space Telescope project. It was announced in 2002 as a project that would cost $1.2 billion (all figures in this item are in current dollars) and launch no later than 2010. In 2006, NASA said the cost had risen to $2.6 billion and the launch date slipped to 2014. In 2008, NASA said the cost was up to $5.2 billion. Last week NASA told Congress that it needs $8.7 billion for the project and cannot launch before 2018.

The new price reflects a sevenfold cost overrun in a single decade. No private business would tolerate such nonsense. Yet no one at NASA or its contractors has been fired or even disciplined for this bungling. Congress just keeps shoveling the money.

If the Webb launches in 2018, that would mean: 16 years just to build a space probe! During that very long period, hundreds of NASA middle managers and their aerospace- contractor counterparts will be handsomely paid to push paperwork about the Webb. The longer they drag the project out -- that is, the worse they perform -- the longer they are well-paid for accomplishing nothing. Former NASA executive Alan Stern told The Washington Post that endless streams of funding increases for bloated projects such as the Webb "rewards bad management." Rewarding bad management is one of the few things Congress is good at!

In a classic Washington bit of make-believe, the House of Representatives appeared to cancel the top-heavy Webb telescope project last spring, zeroing it out of a budget bill. This was when Barack Obama and John Boehner were swearing they would reduce government spending. Canceling the Webb was among the few specific examples of actual savings mentioned by either. This week, the Senate is expected to add back $500 million for the "canceled" project. Much of the work on the Webb is being done in Maryland, and Maryland Sen. Barbara Mikulski has dutifully carried water for every NASA money request. Mikulski argues that Webb spending creates jobs. So would hiring people to dig holes and then fill them up. Government should either create jobs that are beneficial to society, or cut spending so that Americans can make their own decisions about how resources should be allocated. Creating wasteful jobs is a negative for society.

Bear in mind, it's only 2011. NASA says the new space telescope won't launch for another seven years. There's plenty of time for the price to balloon even more. NASA managers know that no matter how much public money they toss out the window, there will never be any form of discipline.

NASA is not a major part of government -- just half of 1 percent of federal spending. But if Congress cannot impose cost discipline on even this relatively small endeavor, how can Congress ever tackle a $14 trillion debt?

In other NASA news, the agency recently announced plans for a new heavy-lift rocket. Expect the Mississippi congressional delegation to support the project regardless of cost, since the primary engineering work would be done in that state.

The heavy lifter of the Apollo program was called the Saturn V, a wonderfully evocative name. The new rocket is to be called the Space Launch System. I am not making that up -- NASA is so poorly run that it can no longer even come up with good names. NASA might as well have dubbed the project the Big Thing With Flames Coming Out. Amusingly, the agency is touting the planned rocket as "affordable" though the initial price tag is $18 billion. And that's just the lowball. NASA knows that if the program is authorized, then unlimited cost overruns will be approved by Congress.

Speaking of Congress, the latest New York Times/CBS News poll shows an all-time-low 9 percent of Americans believe Congress is doing a good job. The 9 percent -- who are these crackpots?