There was enough money to continue Shuttle----bho/Garver/Bolden didn't want to

The week before, 60 minutes presented the perspective of Elon Musk and Space X. Last week 60 minutes showed some balance by  presenting the views of some of  NASA's private vendors. The Augustine Commissioned determined that the space shuttle could be continued if a shuttle derived architecture was selected. It eventually was only after the Obama administration tried to completely stop NASA from developing any manned spaceflight capability. But President Obama still terminated the shuttle program.

Was there enough money to continue the shuttle program until the SLS/MPCV was ready? The Shuttle/ISS program was about $5 billion a year and the Constellation program was $3.4 billion a year. The SLS/MPCV program cost are currently  only $3 billion a year. Bolden claims the SLS development is doing so well that they can even lower SLS/MPCV funding below $3 billion:-) So yes! There was enough money after the Constellation program was canceled.

Plus Congress seemed perfectly willing to even increase the NASA budget if the Obama administration had any clear near term goals for NASA's manned space program. Unfortunately they didn't!