Years of fiscal irresponsibility and the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina have left the federal government neck-deep in red ink. With our nation’s debt rapidly approaching $8 trillion and our government currently losing an average of $1.5 billion a day, it’s high time for our federal agencies to buckle down and cut back on their spending.

But you’d never know that times are tight by the way some in NASA bureaucrats are burning through your money. According to a report released today by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), officials at NASA wasted more than $20 million in the last two years by flying in private jets owned by NASA rather than flying commercial. By traveling in their government-owned private jet, NASA’s employees were running up a travel tab that was five times higher than it would have been had they flown in commercial planes like most other Americans.

NASA has long been known as an agency that’s not afraid to spend freely. NASA employees seem to believe that a steady, generous flow of federal dollars is a birthright, and they have been known to embark on some very dubious projects, like the fabled Russian space monkey program of the late 1990’s. But the GAO’s newest report, which details how NASA uses its overly large fleet of private planes for unnecessary purposes, shows just how wasteful the agency’s earth-bound bureaucrats are on a day-to-day basis.

According to the GAO study, 86% of the flights chartered were for routine business, like meetings and conferences. Why did NASA’s officials use private planes for these trips? Because they could. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has specific guidelines about the use of government-owned planes – OMB clearly states that agencies should own and use planes only for such vital purposes as moving troops or prisoners, conducting intelligence, or performing aeronautical research. But NASA has never followed these rules, and has a miserable record of comparing chartered flights to commercial travel, as they are required to do.

This is not the first time that NASA has been called out for improper use of government aircraft. Reports dating back to the 1970’s document the agency’s liberal use of its fleet, and NASA has been criticized before for its poor cost accounting methods. But today, times are different. We are facing a war, a major rebuilding effort in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and a massive budget deficit; this is no time to be flying high on Uncle Sam’s largesse.

Unless lawmakers find a way to offset the costs of the $200 billion reconstruction of the Gulf Coast, the budget deficit in 2006 may well be the largest in our nation’s history. We need to send a simple message to the bureaucrats at NASA: Fly Coach. This is no time to be burning government money on private jets.