Comments on: House appropriators plan a budget cut for NASA

By: DanWoodard

DanWoodard — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 17:27:31 +0000

NASA needs to provide Americans with practical benefits. We have a small project to use NASA flight hardware to try to find the cause of Alzheimer’s disease. (http://ftalz.com) But it’s a little outside the normal NASA mission scope, so funding is a challenge. We have to persuade the taxpayers that if we can help, it’s worth their investment.

By: DCSCA

DCSCA — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 04:14:44 +0000

Major Tom wrote @ February 10th, 2011 at 9:12 am

They are. And rightly so. But then, you’re a contractor, aren’t you– so you have a personal agenda which clashes with a national agenda that’s good for the nation.

By: CharlesHouston

CharlesHouston — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 02:14:08 +0000

So it appears that the NASA budget might be flat – but still does accommodate the Webb Telescope additional money? If the budget is flat but new expenses have to be added, the budget is actually declining. The previous budget had money for Shuttle missions, but one mission has been added – so that might mean that some money was available for missions that are not on this year’s schedule?

By: Vladislaw

Vladislaw — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 19:15:00 +0000

“Read my lips no new taxes” … well unless you are running trillion dollar deficits.

Fiscal conservatives have used the same tactic ” we will cut your taxes and cut spending” Like President Reagan and President Bush Jr. did .. it is always easy to get the tax cuts passed but they never really tackle the spending cuts they just put that on the Nation’s credit card. Like Dick Cheney said … deficits don’t matter.

“The U.S. tax burden has shrunk to its lowest level in 60 years, the Bureau of Economic Analysis said.

Including state, federal and local taxes, the average tax bill came out to 9.2 percent of personal income in 2009, USA Today reported Tuesday.

That’s down from an average of 12 percent over the past 50 years. The tax burden has not been this low since 1950, the newspaper said.

“The idea that taxes are high right now is pretty much nuts,” said Michael Ettlinger, head of economic policy at the Center for American Progress.”
http://www.upi.com/Business_News/2010/05/11/US-tax-burden-at-lowest-point-in-years/UPI-74091273594893/

Not that I like heavy taxation but if we absolutely refuse to cut spending because of special interests, pork, et cetera, then taxes will have to be raised. Of course it comes at a time when we shouldn’t be raising them.

By: common sense

common sense — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 17:06:29 +0000

Well this is just blowing hot air as some specialist around here can attest to. If we really want to fix the way we go about our budget it does not serve any purpose to “cut”. We need to revise our entire system. Congress is not going to cut the pork that gets them elected! Let’s be real for a minute.

What is the total proposed cut? $74B Our proposed US budget has a $1.27T, yes Trillions. How much of cut is that????

They just DON’T KNOW what to do and they try for some idiotic measure. What’s new?

http://appropriations.house.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressReleases.Detail&PressRelease_id=259

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_United_States_federal_budget

By: Robert G. Oler

Robert G. Oler — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 15:50:49 +0000

All this shows is that the GOP’s cutting of the budget is simply “wind”.

Robert G. Oler

By: Major Tom

Major Tom — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 14:12:52 +0000

DC: “Deeper cuts are sure to come.”

They’re not. This starting point is the nadir for negotiations. Between special interests in the House, the Democrat-controlled Senate, and the White House, and the budget pressure is all upward from here.

DC: “The $30 billion number is woefully unsatisfactory to GOP frosh…”

MW: “… antithetical to the Tea Party constituency that now dominates the party.”

So what? They’re freshmen. They’re inexperienced, they don’t have seniority and powerful committee posts, and they’re actually outnumbered by traditional Republicans, not to mention the Democrats.

This is only a $103 million cut, or a lousy 0.6% reduction, from last year’s budget. So much for the “Age of Austerity”, at least at NASA.

Sigh…

By: amightywind

amightywind — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 13:23:58 +0000

Boehner made a terrible mistake appointing Hal Rogers to chair the appropriations committee. He is in old guard, big spending Republican, antithetical to the Tea Party constituency that now dominates the party. Making an adversary of the Tea Party is something Boehner and the leadership can ill afford. The expectation should be that NASA’s budget is rolled back to 2008, at minimum. It is too bad comparison information was not given with budgets from 2008 and 2006.

By: DCSCA

DCSCA — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 12:43:15 +0000

Deeper cuts are sure to come. Saw Issa in the media this morning vowing the GOP will have to revisit these proposals and cut deeper to reach $100 billion worth of cuts in discretionary spending promised in November. The $30 billion number is woefully unsatisfactory to GOP frosh who’ve been catching flack from constituents already for balking at making the hard decisions, as the proposals are chiefly in social programs and spare defense, medicare, medicaid and SS. In this environment, expect the space agency to be treading water, rudderless again for another fiscal year.