Is House Majority Leader Tom DeLay an asset or a liability for NASA? In the short-term he certainly seems like an asset, particularly given his last-minute goal line stand during the final budget negotiations, threatening to block the omnibus budget bill unless $300 million was added to NASA’s budget, bringing it up to essentially the Administration’s original request. A front-page Washington Post article Monday describes DeLay’s role in getting NASA’s budget passed despite earlier efforts to cut the budget as well as some reluctance, if not opposition, to the Vision for Space Exploration in and out of Congress. The Post article notes:
DeLay, whose newly redrawn district includes the Johnson Space Center, and NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe have all but claimed a mandate; but even with the money and parts of the project already up and running, the questions that once threatened to kill the initiative still remain largely unresolved.
Is there, in fact, a “mandate” for the exploration vision? Greg Zsidisin suggests otherwise in an article in The Space Review, noting that there is not a strong consensus in support of the vision in Congress yet. Moreover, DeLay himself has some strong negatives, as well as some ethical problems, that could, through association, hurt the agency in the future. A Dallas Morning News article Monday notes that DeLay, by pushing through a controversial redistricting, has broken up what had been strong bipartisan cooperation within the Texas Congressional delegation, although members of both parties hope it can be restored. “Texas has always pulled together for NASA, for the aerospace industry, for transportation and border issues,” said Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX). “I’m confident we’ll do it again.”
Greg’s article is another embaressing, partisan rant, filled with half truths and innuendos. Even though George W. Bush will not be President after 2008, one suspects that despite the attemp to demonize Delay by partisan cranks like Ronnie Earl, the Hammer will be a power in the House well into this century. I suspect that he’ll be Speaker after Hasteret.
Sorry to hear you’re embarrassed by what DeLay is, but of course so are many other people.
This person represents the very worst of what’s going on in Washington: a smirking disregard for ethics and due process.
Calling Prosecutor Ronnie Earl a “crank” is itself a demonizing tactic, here against someone who has historically prosecuted more Democrats than Republicans. Even before this, DeLay has shown himself to be someone of, at best, loose ethics.
You missed the point on 2008: it’s all still easily reversible even after Bush leaves office. What’s more, you have momentum to exit Shuttle and Station, providing an opening to distribute NASA monies elsewhere. This something that Neil Tyson of the Moon / Mars committee has specifically said he fears.
The one thing the budget has going for it is that once the increase has been institutionalized, it will be harder to argue for a rollback. Harder, but hardly impossible.
Point is: a decades-long effort is not going to make it for too long this way. In fact, the way it was done will tend to draw outrage, not support.
I intend to withhold judgment until I see the CEV plans. If it will have comparable capabilities to Kliper at a vastly higher price then we will know the VSE is doomed to irrelevance.
But if CEV contracts are awarded to Rutan and Musk (for example) and we then develop an American capability to reach LEO at or below Russian & Ukrainian cost levels then there is hope that the VSE will be the breakthrough Mark Whittington predicts.
Greg, take solace as follows:
If the VSE fails there are NO Democrats to blame.
If Mark Whittington’s vision of the VSE comes true and it ushers in the spacefaring era, we should all gladly appreciate that development.
= = =
The Indians just bought Airbus, correct? Which will sell better (and be the better value) Kliper or CEV? That is the question that matters most.
I think W does not want to risk being remembered as HW instead of JFK. It leaves a blank slate for the next Prez at least.
Bill: “No Democrats were harmed in the making of this space program?”
I’d love to see a return to the Moon in my lifetime. It’s not so much that I care if Republicans or Democrats get us there. It’s more that with what’s going on with the Republicans, that we not only won’t get there, but that other things — like our basic freedoms and ways of life — will suffer.
Kliper is an interesting development, but it remains to be seen if they’ll do it. If they do, and we exit the ISS program so that the US and Russian programs diverge once again, I’d think that Kliper would be irrelevant. We can’t / won’t use it, and it’s not a competitor to CEV unless it’s truly part of a new Russian Moon attempt. I’d argue that it may not matter so much.
The competition seems more likely to me to come from a privately developed orbital transport, such as the entries for the proposed America’s prize. Then the question is: will the government-sponsored spacecraft dampen private funding of these vehicles? Will the government really embrace using a private (non-subsidized) vehicle?
It may be interesting if Kliper gets financed privately. Not that that seems to be in the cards at the moment.
Greg, as usual, does not have his facts straight. Tom Delay is not under some sort of ethical cloud, except in the minds of liberal partisans. Indeed his accuser, soon to be former Congressman Chris Bell, got his hand slapped for ‘exaggurated’ (read false and lying) ethics accusations against Delay by the Ethics Committee. As for Ronnie Earl, I understand Greg’s enormous ignorence of Texas politics. Ronnie tried to do the same thing to Senator Kay Baily Hutchison ten years ago as he is now trying to do to Tom Delay and got laughed out of court for it. Ronnie has a well deserved reputation for flimsy and partisan investigations against political opponents. I agree on the necessity to solidify support for MM&B in the next four years. But it won’t be done by hurling half baked and even false smears against one of its main supporters in the Congress. I suggest that Greg get over his Post Election Selection Trauma and get used to the fact that the main hope for spreading civilization beyond this planet came from a Republican President, was supported warmly by a Republican House Majority Leader, and was opposed by the majority of Democrats.
Whittington need only follow one of the links in my article to see the letter that Republican Joel Hefley, Chairman of the House Ethics Committee, signed along with Ranking Minority Member Alan Mollohan, chastising DeLay:
http://www.house.gov/ethics/DeLay_letter.htm
Usually, where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Unless you’ve got someone like Whittington trying to blow it up your ass…
Of course the letter was roughly the equivilent of getting a warning at a traffic stop. The committe did not recommend any sanctions. Basically Delay was accused of having the “appearence” of wrong doing and was told to be careful about that in the future. No amount of partisan vulgarity is going to change that.
Delay is one of the great champions of space exploration in the Congress. Trashing him because you don’t like his politics is not going to advance the cause of a space future.
Zsidisin: “with the Republicans, that we not only won’t get there, but that other things — like our basic freedoms and ways of life — will suffer.”
So now we know the reason for the burr in Zsidisins’ saddle. He doesn’t think Bush is a Nazi, he thinks all Republicans are Nazis. So why would one expect any of his writings on the VSE to be objective?
Tell us Greg, what freedoms have you lost? How has your way of life been adversely effected by Republican rule?
You can tell which side Guy Gugliotta (Washington Post) is on.
“What will it really cost? What NASA programs will be cut to fund it? How will other science agencies be affected?”
Guy should have included this question:
“Is this article reporting or commentary?”
I guess some questions still remain largely unresolved.
What a unique definition of pork spending Greg has
“This increase came about because the House Majority Leader, Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas), ran roughshod over his own party’s budget deliberations to bring the bacon home to his district, which now includes (after a recent, controversial redistricting) the Johnson Space Center. The “endorsement” to which O’Keefe lays claim is in fact one of the largest pieces of pork in the final spending bill of the 108th Congress, decided by a single person after the budget deliberation process.
Moreover, the pork comes to O’Keefe in the form of a blank check. The legislation gives O’Keefe almost total flexibility over NASA monies, allowing him to allocate agency funds at his discretion,..”
Uh Greg, how is it pork spending if O’Keefe can spend the money as he sees fit? How is DeLay bringing the bacon home if O’Keefe chooses to not spend a dime in DeLay’s district? Maybe (Gasp!) DeLay really supports space exploration after all.
Greg’s oh-so-insightful analysis belongs in http://www.dailykos.com, not in thespacereview. Greg’s partisanship is preventing him from thinking clearly about space policy. Greg’s point is that Republicans are evil, and that since Republicans are making space policy, therefore the space policy is evil. Ugh.
I’ll make Greg a deal, I’ll agree that Republicans are evil if Greg will admit that the Democrats are the anti-space party. Space issues such as more money for NASA and laws reforming private spaceflight are now passing despite huge majorities of congressional Democrats voting against them.
Just as it is an oversimplification to say that Republicans are evil (I could have lived with McCain (sp?) as President and I have to admit that, even though I frequently disagree with him, our current governor in California is doing a pretty decent job), it is an oversimplification to say that Democrats are “anti-space.” Democrats vote the way they do because the choice is always presented as space vs. social programs. When the two were presented in a supportive, synergystic fashion (Johnson’s support of Apollo as part of a “social engineering” effort to industrialize the south – which the south benefits from to this date), Democrats support it. Clinton found a social purpose to justify the Space Station that moderates in both parties could subscribe to (helping to bring Russia peacefully into the global economy), and pretty much saved the program (for better or wose!). Based on his history, Gore, whatever his other faults, would almost certainly have been a strong supporter of spaceflight, and if we’d had four more years of Clinton economics we might even have been able to pay for it.
— Donald
>and if we’d had four more years of Clinton economics we might even have been able to pay for it.
That’s an oversimplification/exaggeration of the highest order. The economy was already entering a slowdown before Clinton even left office. And the economy would still have taken a huge hit on 9/11/01 regardless of who was in the White House.
He was simply lucky to have been in office during a booming period that was due in only a small part, if at all, to any policy he authored.
And, yours is an oversimilification in return. Clinton would have had to deal with the same hard times, but he would not have used credit card economics in anything like the disasterous scale we are seeing today. Based on his prior history, I think it likely that he would have kept spending under far better control, he probably would not have cut taxes, and he certainly would not have done so primarily for people do not directly stimulate the economy, at least in the short term. (The rich invest their money, often overseas, while the poor spend their money right away, providing a direct and immediate stimulous to the economy.)
Based on his prior history, I think it likely that he would have kept spending under far better control
He had no history of keeping spending under control. That didn’t happen until the Republicans gained control of Congress in 1994. That said, certainly another four years of Clinton would have resulted in reduced spending more than under Bush, assuming the Republicans retained the Hill.
Rand – Certain Clintoin would have spent less, though mainly because he would have punted after 9/11 just as he did after every other terrorist attack on his watch.
Just maybe Clinton would have saved un-tolled national treasure — that could have been spent on, say, Moon / Mars initiatives — by confining the war to the nation and people who had actually attacked us.
Donald – Like FDR did in WWII with his Europe First strategy? 9/11 taught us that waiting for an enemy to hit first–Saddam or anyone else–is a bad thing.
Not at all. In WWII, if I recall correctly, we were helping allies who had been attacked and were asking for help. Later, we responded to an attack on our soil.
Does this new policy mean that we will preemptively attack _everyone_ who _might_ attack us? With no consideration of likelyhood or relative threat? Does this mean we are now going to attack Iran, North Korea, or, for that matter, Russia? Saudi Arabia (a nation that really did attack us on 9-11)?
That’s a lot of wars for a close-to-bankrupt country to finance. All other problems with that strategy aside, where does the money for Moon / Mars come from?
Someone earlier asked a fellow Democrat on this site how he, personally, had been hurt by Mr. Bush’s policies. That’s easy. Because of this damned vendetta in Iraq, we cannot afford to do the things we want to do in space.
— Donald
Clinton had eight years of a good economy and all he did was cut NASA’s budget in real dollars for the first time since the winding down of Apollo. To suppose another four years would have been anything but more of the same is ludicrous.
Clinton may have made VSE a reality inadvertantly in that his and Goldin’s cuts to the shuttle budget may have help doom the Columbia and provided the catalyst for VSE.
Yes, Mike, he did decrease NASA’s budget and I would rather he hadn’t. I have never argued that Clinton was a perfect President.
But, he was doing that because he didn’t just talk deficit reduction, he was actually trying to do it — unlike any Republican President to date.
Mr. Clinton’s space policy was far from perfect, and in many ways it was inferior to Mr. Bush’s. However, while cutting NASA’s budget, he also vastly increased the agency’s efficiency (far more successful missions were flown); he saved the Space Station (and by extension the Shuttle) from almost certain cancellation (which I concede may not be an entirely unmixed blessing, but was hardly “anti-space”). Further, most of these policy initiatives came from Mr. Gore and any Gore administration would almost certainly have been very pro-space.
N.B., I consider Mr. Gore’s loss one of the great losses of recent politics. His political views were probably closer to mine — what I call an “environmental technocrat” — than any other politician to have made it to high office, or likely to do so in the near future. In other words, he broke the cliche of the “anti-technology Democrat” versus the “anti-environment Republican.” Given that the best policy probably really is somewhere between the two extremes, he would have been the best President.
— Donald