It seems to me that transferring NSF's astronomy responsibilities to NASA would be a terrible mistake. NSF's astronomy division has been helpful and accountable in funding pure science. The way NASA has selected projects has seemed arbitrary and opaque to many astronomers, since no reviews are provided to rejected proposals.

My fear is that if NASA becomes the sole agency for funding astronomy, the support for research in pure science will tend to shrink and disappear, given NASA's unimpressive track record in selecting projects with the most scientific merit.

I think the benefit to science of keeping NSF's astronomy division with adequate funding greatly outweighs any management "effectiveness" that could be gained by handing everything over to NASA.