A persistent failing in the U.S. system is the ability of congress to micromanage the minutiae of larger programs, all for pork barrel spending. Things like the gasket problems on the Shuttle SRBs, and NASA in general being spread all over the country are all related to every single Congressperson trying to get a little something to take home. In a perfect world, they would have to authorize money at an agency level and with no finer granularity. Of course, if that were the case no money would ever be allocated at all...