Campaign '08

McCain and Mars

While there isn’t an official transcript of John McCain’s speech Friday in Melbourne, Florida on the McCain-Palin 2008 web site, you can see video of the speech courtesy of Florida Today (although it wasn’t working well for me this morning) and also Central Florida News 13. Here’s the passage by McCain that mentions space policy:

If I’m elected president I won’t cut NASA funds like Senator Obama did and then reverse myself [cheering] here on the Space Coast for political benefit. My friends, we just saw the Chinese, saw them in space. We’ve got competition. We’ve got to say ahead. We will be the first nation to Mars. We will continue, we will continue to lead in space. [cheering] I’ve always been a strong supporter of manned spaceflight and NASA. I will fund NASA including the $2 billion needed to minimize the gap between the retirement of the shuttle and the movement to a new vehicle.

In addition, News 13 interviewed McCain before his speech and asked the candidate if his pledge to freeze discretionary spending suggested “that means NASA’s not getting any more money?”

Of course not, of course not. It means that we’re going to move money around. We’re going to have an across-the-board cut and we’re going to have a scalpel as well, and we’re going to cut out those programs that are unneeded and unnecessary… Space is vital. We have to be the first people on Mars. And we just saw the advances that the Chinese are making… Eighteen billion dollars’ worth of earmarks: that would do a lot for NASA’s budget, that would do a lot for early childhood education.

It’s interesting in both cases that McCain specifically mentioned the need for the US to be the first nation to land people on Mars, an imperative that is lacking from the campaign’s official space policy, which merely endorses the existing space exploration policy that includes “an eventual mission to Mars” and calls on the US to remain “a leader” in space exploration.

18 comments to McCain and Mars

  • Chance

    Glad he finally made an unambiguous statement on the subject.

  • SpaceMan

    Remember that what a politician says during a campaign has NOTHING to do with what he/she will ACTUALLY will do if elected.

    Never forget that.

  • RCT

    Yes, SpaceMan…true for both candidates.

  • Doug Lassiter

    I find these words to be interesting. His priorities seem to be (1) leadership in space, and (2) going to Mars. I don’t see any clear understanding from him of how these priorities are justified as national needs, though. You’d like a President to be able to express some real vision about this. Going to Mars is something that simply won’t happen for a very long time, and leadership in space can mean many things. You’d think someone who oversaw NASA on Senate Commerce for so many years would have some such vision.

    I’d like to understand what his nearer term goals are. Unfortunately, this smells to me more like a “yeah, I support whatever it is we’re doing”, rather than an intelligent assessment of what we need to be doing (which might well conclude that what we should be doing is what we are doing). Some articulation of what space exploration really means to the nation would be nice, and I’m just not hearing it from him here.

    Oh yes, and $18B of earmarks, when spread out over what McCain considers to be deserving parts of the federal budget, would not do half a whit for space exploration or early childhood education. I find McCain’s obsession with earmarks to be a real obstacle to taking this guy seriously. I don’t particularly like earmarks either, but on a scale of fiscal and policy importance, it’s way down the list.

    Nice to see that he’s talking about using scalpels, though. But he’s not the first to do so.

  • Joe Smith

    I’m less interested in Mars than what he said in his speech about that extra (?) $2B: “to minimize the gap between the retirement of the shuttle and the movement to a new vehicle”. Notice he didn’t say “Ares”, “Orion”, or “Constellation”. Am I reading too much between the lines to think that McCain might be interested in scrapping Constellation in favor of some other alternative, like COTS or an EELV-capsule combo?

  • MarkWhittington

    “Am I reading too much between the lines to think that McCain might be interested in scrapping Constellation in favor of some other alternative, like COTS or an EELV-capsule combo?”

    Yes, though I think McCain will support COTS as well.

  • Charles In Houston

    With any luck at all, whoever is elected will at least keep COTS as a back up to Orion. If Orion goes along the path of normal large development programs, COTS will beat them to space easily. Since COTS should involve far less development of new hardware/software/procedures.

    So then perhaps we will all be able to go over and work on a real commercial program (this coming from someone who has not ever actually worked on a real commercial program!).

    Though Jim Muncy has almost convinced me that the commercial world is as unfun as the government world.

  • I don’t particularly like earmarks either, but on a scale of fiscal and policy importance, it’s way down the list.

    The point about earmarks isn’t their size, but the fact that they are used as leverage to buy votes on much larger spending bills. If we could eliminate them, we might have a lot better chances to mimimize logrolling.

  • Doug Lassiter

    Actually, the way it usually works is that earmarks are used as leverage for other earmarks. A few million dollar earmark on a NASA approps bill, for example, isn’t going to buy any votes on a half trillion dollar Defense approps bill.

    Now, a bridge to nowhere could perhaps buy a vote, but that’s worth a bit more cash than a planetarium projector, which is what McCain seems to be obsessing about these days.

    $18B just doesn’t roll too many logs. Logrolling is much more effective with funding augmentations that are part of the legislated bill language, rather than glued on in conference report language (which is what an earmark is).

    So I guess McCain is promising that his funding for our leadership on a Mars program won’t be in the form of an earmark. Whew! Though if his discretionary budget is frozen, it’ll take more than a scalpel to carve out the $2B he’d like to seed the effort with.

  • Brad

    Uh, it seems to me that McCain was simply saying that the extra money for NASA could come from cutting earmarks, despite the budget freeze. Why try to make more out of it than that?

  • Doug Lassiter

    Uh, it seems to me that McCain was simply saying that the extra money for NASA could come from cutting earmarks, despite the budget freeze. Why try to make more out of it than that?

    Because it doesn’t work that way, and McCain knows it. Congress does the earmarking. For a president to “cut earmarks” essentially means successfully threatening to veto congressional legislation that includes earmarks. This president made that threat, and was largely unsuccessful in doing it. Threatening to veto legislation is hardly a way to ensure stable and reliable funding. A space exploration program that hinges on earmarks that don’t get made is laughable.

    Besides, as said above, if the amount committed to earmarks is spread over McCain’s priorities, NASA will be able to barely buy a few more bolts and nuts.

    Re earmarks, it’s McCain who’s making more out of it than he should.

  • Al Fansome

    SIMBERG: The point about earmarks isn’t their size, but the fact that they are used as leverage to buy votes on much larger spending bills. If we could eliminate them, we might have a lot better chances to mimimize logrolling.

    This is an interesting issue, which is worth thinking about. However, it is not totally clear what the actual linkage is.

    I agree there is a link between getting your earmarks, and voting for the appropriations leadership’s priorities. If you don’t vote with the leaders of appropriations, your district/state gets punished. It makes it harder to come up with the votes against a specific appropriation.

    However, the overall budget — which is developed and approved each year — establishes caps on spending. The spending caps, which are established by the budget committees, is a completely separate process from appropriations. The budget caps are are not affected by earmarks, and do set hard limits on the regular appropriations process for discretionary spending. The budget process suggests that the earmark issue is not relevant to overall spending levels — but is more relevant to forcing members to vote for the leadership’s priorities within the spending levels.

    The real drivers for budget growth are the exceptions to normal budget rules — particularly 1) non-discretionary spending, and 2) emergency supplemental appropriations (which are not subject to budget caps). Non-discretionary spending is exploding, as is the creativeness of Congress is deciding what is an “emergency”.

    I, of course, would be interested in hearing from somebody who works/worked on the Hill on this issue.

    – Al

  • HillGuy

    Al,

    The Budget Committees very rarely actually produce a conference budget resolution which is binding on the Appropriators. The “caps”, if there are any, are set by the Chairman of the two Appropriations committees in allocating funds among the subcommittees. Each subc gets an amount which they must divide among the agencies under their jurisdiction.

    Appropriations is almost entirely a purely political process. The supreme rule is: do you have a majority to pass the bill? At subcommittee, at full committee, and on the floor.

    Therefore, buying votes using earmarks helps assure that you get the majority you need to pass the bill. If you don’t pass the bill, then the Majority Party has failed to fund part of the government. Utlimately, that includes getting a bill past the President. (Note the lesson learned by Speaker Gingrich back in the winter of 1995.)

    – Hill Guy
    (who might need to get an earmark some day)

  • Brad

    So then, if I understand the critique of the McCain spending plan it goes something like this —

    The McCain budget plan will hurt NASA because…

    1) McCain would get an overall budget freeze

    2) But McCain would never get a rollback of earmarks

    Methinks some people are trying to have things both ways, to spin a negative conclusion about McCain.

  • Al Fansome

    BRAD: the critique of the McCain spending plan it goes something like this –

    The McCain budget plan will hurt NASA because…

    1) McCain would get an overall budget freeze

    2) But McCain would never get a rollback of earmarks

    Brad,

    First, I think the earmark issue is a global budgetary issue, not a NASA issue. I accept the comments by HillGuy, and am saddened that the budget process is toothless. We need to fix this.

    We need the line item veto. In one of the worst decisions in recent history, the Supreme Court declared that the line item veto authority — which Newt Gingrich handed to Bill Clinton in a huge act of bipartisanship for the good of the country — was unconstitutional. This was an atrocious decision.

    Second, I could make a *policy* case that freezing NASA’s budget might force people to make some critical decisions about priorities, and to bring needed change to NASA. That a “freeze” would be good policy.

    However, a “budget freeze” that hits NASA is bad politics at this very narrow point in time.

    This has nothing to do with what is good or bad policy, or what NASA should be doing, but is all about presidential politics. The Florida voters who will have a significant say in who the next President will be could care less about “space policy” beyond “how much bacon do we get?”

    This is purely a case of “promised money = increased hope for jobs = votes”.

    This is a case of “Who can pander more? Obama or McCain?”

    At the end of the day, they are both pandering about the same to Florida voters near KSC — communicating they will add a one-time $2 Billion to NASA (e.g., Florida jobs), in spite of a desperate financial situation and a federal deficit that may approach $1 Trillion next year.

    After November 4th, many of the spending promises will go away, as the winner will “discover” the national budget crisis. They will then “cut” spending (or projected growth in spending).

    In each of the last two debates, the budget deficit was a major topic of discussion. Neither candidate was willing to truly fess up that they could not both keep all the promises they had made and clearly spell out which promises they can not keep.

    That will be left to after the election.

    FWIW,

    – Al

  • Vladislaw

    Regardless of spending priorities of McCain, he WILL be faced with a hostile democratic congress. McCain has burned every bridge with the democrats by saying everyone democrat is a liberal, socialist, communist, anti american. McCain has ALSO burned most bridges he had with the secular conservatives, ( Will, Brooks, Parker, Powell) So I feel McCain will also have trouble within his own party. No look for McCain passing ANYTHING he wants.

    The American empire is seeing china moving into africa inmass. For the man behind the curtain, Obama is the clear answer for America moving into africa. The US military recently announced the building of a command center in africa. Senior military officials have commented that we can not go into asia and the middle east is very volitile and africa is the clear answer to being in the neighborhood for actions in the 21st century.

    Obama is the clear choice for an america if there is to be any nation building in the 21st century.

  • Peter K

    This is the same man as dismissed the purchase of a new projector for a planetarium as a “$3 million overhead projector”?

    Landing a human on mars would be much much harder than on the moon:
    universe today

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