Space Politics

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Rep. Cramer to retire

March 14, 2008 at 8:52 am · Filed under Congress

A leading backer of NASA in Congress is retiring after this year. Rep. Bud Cramer (D-AL) announced Thursday that he will not run for a tenth term. Cramer, whose district includes Huntsville and NASA Marshall, serves on the appropriations committee, although he moved off the subcommittee that oversees NASA’s budget last year.

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5 Comments »

Jonathan Goff wrote @ March 15th, 2008 at 4:06 pm

So, for a someone who’s more of a policy junky than a politics junky, how many congresspeople with NASA centers in their district are still in positions of power wrt appropriations? Wasn’t there a congressperson from Florida that had been one of NASA’s other big champions that announced he wasn’t seeking reelection either? Any thoughts on how this will impact the funding of NASA (as well as the “political constraints” in which it operates)?

~Jon

Dennis Wingo wrote @ March 15th, 2008 at 10:02 pm

Cramer was much more interested in supporting Redstone arsenal as the number of jobs is several times higher than for NASA.

J.B. wrote @ March 16th, 2008 at 2:13 pm

The member of Congress from Florida is Weldon. It is too bad, for the more seniority the members who represent NASA centers have, the better for the space program.

Rand Simberg wrote @ March 16th, 2008 at 3:36 pm

It is too bad, for the more seniority the members who represent NASA centers have, the better for the space program.

No, the better for NASA budgets. The size of NASA budgets doesn’t correlate (or perhaps it correlates negatively) with the quality of the space program.

Kevin Parkin wrote @ March 27th, 2008 at 8:08 pm

I agree with Rand.