Donald,

The White House released a budget sand chart showing more money for NASA in the out years, but the sand chart by itself is not a promise. That was a long-term budget projection. 5-year budget projections get revised every year.

A promise, is when you make a promise.

– Al

Take care. mjl

Here’s all I can find in the VSE speech:

Achieving these goals requires a long-term commitment. NASA’s current five-year budget is $86 billion. Most of the funding we need for the new endeavors will come from reallocating $11 billion within that budget. We need some new resources, however. I will call upon Congress to increase NASA’s budget by roughly a billion dollars, spread out over the next five years.

He didn’t “promise billions of extra dollars.” He said that he would ask Congress for a billion, which he did. Furthermore, he made his first veto threat in his administration over the singular issue of whether or not NASA would get a funding increase, and he got it. Blaming George Bush for NASA’s budget problems, or of reneging on a non-existent “promise” (no president is in a position to even make such a promise, given who holds the purse strings in Washington) is a classic symptom of BDS. As I said, there’s much to criticize Bush for, but this is silly.

The initial VSE did propose a substantial increase in NASA’s budget, which failed to materialize. Mr. Bush may or may not have been aware of it, but his Administration did make this promise.

— Donald

When did he promise that? Did I miss something?

I’m guessing the answers will be pretty similar to lumpy oatmeal. And it’s not like you can really hold them to anything they might promise anyway. Bush refused to provide the billions of extra dollars he promised for the moon and Mars. And it was his own proposal!