CQ Politics published a transcript of a conference call featuring Sen. Bill Nelson earlier today talking about primarily about Medicare and Medicaid, but the senator, unsurprisingly, talked a bit about space policy in his opening remarks:
Well, as we speak, John McCain has left Miami and he’s en route to my home town of Melbourne. And the fact that he’s going to Brevard County is an indication that he is quite concerned that Barack has really sliced in to that traditionally Republican area, because Barack has a very detailed proposal on America’s space program, and John McCain has had a proposal, as he said two nights ago in the debate, of a freeze at last year’s levels across the board.
And, of course, if they do that with NASA, it will absolutely continue to savage NASA, as George Bush’s administration has done, that’s leading us at the space center, when they shut down the space shuttle, to 4,000 to 5,000 jobs laying off because they have not developed the new rocket to replace the space shuttle, and we’re going to be beholden to the Russians to get to the very space station that we built and paid for, and — and — and without an American vehicle for five to six years.
Barack has addressed this. And I submit to you that that’s exactly why McCain is going to Brevard County, which went heavily for George Bush over John Kerry , and he’s going in there because he knows that — that Barack has — has absolutely pierced those Republican engineers who are so concerned about America’s space program.
Of course, even before McCain’s speech today the campaign has indicated that the Republican presidential candidate would be pressing for more money for NASA, exempting the agency from the “across the board” freeze that Nelson referred to. More interesting, though, is the claim that Obama’s space policy has won over (or “pierced”, as Nelson put it, which sounds kinda painful) KSC workers, even those who are Republicans.
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