I Love My Job

Another perk of my job is that I get to learn little tidbits of facts throughout the day. One in particular is about the space program budget.
My mom and dad came to Ennis tonight to see my apartment and view the metropolis I live in. I had to cover an event during the night and while at the party I decided to finish up my man on the street column. One of the questions was about NASA's budget.
After asking the question and discussing it with my dad, we were on opposite sides about how much they truly receive from the government. I said tens of billions of dollars. This would entail $20 billion to $99 billion. My dad said it was much smaller than that. In fact, he said I would be surprised at how small it would be.
Well, if you haven't already looked it up on Google or if you aren't a rocket scientist, then you probably don't know the answer either. Take a stab before you read the next paragraph.
The answer is in 2006, the Discretionary Budget Authority will be issuing $16.5 billion to NASA. Wow, that's a lot.
So, I was off by a few billions, but when you reach 16 billion what is a billion here or there?