While plans may be laid at NASA, they seem to always be still born, and the idea of incrementalism is nonexistant.

Instead of going to Congress and saying, "We want to go to Mars. To do it we need $XXX Billion for heavy lift launchers, new shuttles, an orbital station for construction and fueling, plus nuclear powered craft that can go to locations X,Y, and Z in a short amount of time," they should come up with a plan and begin phasing it in piece by piece. Don't even let congress see the whole picture until men are on their way to the Red Planet. The head of NASA needs to begin acting like the head and taking some initiative of his own. Build a heavy lift launcher, then a manned transporter, then a station in a useful orbit, and then a nuclear powered interplanetary craft. This could be done within the current budget. Not all at once, but over the course of one to two decades. No spastic revolutions, just slow steady progress.

They also need to get their costs under control. There is no reason on Earth why the ISS should cost 60-80 billion dollars. A 100,000 ton nuclear powered aircraft carrier only cost around $5 billion. For $15 billion a year, we should be able to do a heck of a lot more than what we're doing now. We can forget having Cheap Access to Space while they're still spending $1,000 per screw.