Both Reuters and the San Francisco Chronicle report that one possibility why President Bush left his new space initiative out of the State of the Union address Tuesday is because of conservative opposition to expensive projects. “Critics said the mere mention of the program would have drawn groans from some members of both parties,” write the SFChron’s Zachary Coile.
This could be an interesting development. The Reuters article cites conservatives who claim that the omission is “a sign… that he [Bush] may be having second thoughts.” That seems unlikely, given that the program will cost NASA only an additional $1 billion beyond what was already planned for the agency through 2009 (the final year of a 2nd Bush term). Even afterwards, according to NASA documents, NASA’s budget would raisely largely at the same pace as inflation through 2020. The lack of a single price, though, has annoyed some. “There’s no other program of this magnitude that Congress has ever endorsed where they didn’t have at least an estimate for the price tag,” former Congressman Dick Zimmer, a Republican, told Knight Ridder. What sort of pressure this puts on NASA and the administration remains to be seen.
This isn’t too surprising, despite the fact that Republicans usually seem so united behind Bush. Back in the 1960s, during the debates over funding for the Apollo program, most of the opposition was lead by conservatives Senator like Richard Russell of George (a Democrat) and Barry Goldwater of Arizona (a Republican). Those who backed Apollo in Congress, like Hubert Humphrey, Warren Magnuson and Edmund Muskie, had reputations as being quite liberal in their politics.
Keith Cowing of NASA Watch is saying that the rumor of conservative discontent against the new space policy is a false one.
Also, the previous poster is somewhat misinformed about the politics of Apollo. While Goldwater was uncomfortable about Apollo, wanting more spending for military space projects, the main opposition, when one looks at attempts to cut funding, came from the far left, Senators Fulbright and Proxmire leading the effort. They were joined in the late sixties by Senators Mondale, Teddy Kennedy, and McGovern.
Mark,
You’re quite right when you point out that later opposition was spearheaded by many liberal members of Congress, but I was refering to the opposition to the initial funding proposals. JFK’s time, not LBJ’s.
If you think I’m ill-informed, please check the voting records.
I’ve listened to two call in shows, originating on Wisconsin Public Radio, on the topic of ‘space’ in the past week. This was remarkable for two things;
The topic was done on two different shows in one week – I don’t think that’s done very often on WPR.
The WPR call-in shows attract an educated, liberal audience. I heard part of one, and all of the other; not one caller that I can recall spoke _against_ spending money on ‘space'; I expected to hear the usual “we can’t spend money _there_ while there are so many problems _here_” argument.
I heard callers discuss manned vs. robotic missions, but no strident voices against. Does this indicate that The People realize the importance of space?
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4031857/
Bringing space costs back down to Earth
A trillion dollars? NASA initiative won’t cost near that much
By James Oberg
NBC News space analyst
Special to MSNBC
Updated: 1:39 a.m. ET Jan. 23, 2004
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=11605
“New Space Exploration Vision” Distributed to NASA Employees 16 Jan 2004
(Click on image to download 264 kb PDF file)
I love this- “only an additional $1 billion”.
$1 billion dollars is almost never called ONLY $1 billion except when it is someone else’s money.
Space politics run in deeper waters than the stuff you see being spoken by Democrats (who oppose everything Bush) or in the media (who might hate everything Bush, or just need to get a story out to market). So they exaggerate the cost, who really cares? Dem. Pres. candidates will oppose Bush’s “go-there” proposal whether it costs a trillion, or a billion. Even a million will be too much, victimizing some kids somewhere. Notice how we always build a pc case on cost and on children? Doesn’t anyone care about old men?
If you want to understand the pro/con positions of real people (aka “the public”) you need to get deeper into the values and belief systems that create each person’s agendas. Presidential candidates can play the party and cost cards because most voters will accept them as the easy way out, too. First polls on the Bush space proposal showed a 48% to 48% split. That’s amazing. I don’t think the party affiliation (more a 50 to 30 split by registration), or the price (billion, trillion, way beyond my understanding) made that! Talk about education or health, and party and cost factors go out the window. No, the positions stem from deeper roots. Drop into the café if you want my ruminations about those.
Good blog, though. Glad I found you
Admittedly, political currents may change quite a bit between now and November 2nd. Nevertheless, it’s worth viewing Bush’s rather anti-entrepreneurial favoring of Boeing & Lockheed (and especially USA) regarding space through the following electoral prism:
Newsweek poll: most want Bush to LOSE this November…
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/040124/nysa010a_1.html
Who is this NASAWatch.INFO person? Have you seen his website? What a lunatic!
Are you kidding me? 16.2 billion dollars for what? One would think we might catch on after years and years, billions and billions of dollars, that we are not meant to live on another planet. Please give it up, not completely, but enough to feed the starving children and sick men and women of less fortunate countries. After these problems are solved then I will not object to the billions spent on another planet, or an attempt to reach another planet.
Are you kidding me? 16.2 billion dollars for what? One would think we might catch on after years and years, billions and billions of dollars, that we are not meant to live on another planet. Please give it up, not completely, but enough to feed the starving children and sick men and women of less fortunate countries. After these problems are solved then I will not object to the billions spent on another planet, or an attempt to reach another planet.