Tag: budget

NASA announces Orion program will continue

3:20 pm

NASA announces that the Orion program will continue, though under a different name.

This is a non-announcement, made to appease those in Congress who are requiring NASA to build the program-formerly-called-Constellation. NASA will do as Congress demands, and in the process will build nothing while spending a lot of money for a rocket and space capsule that can’t be built for the amount budgeted.

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Dear Congress: Your credit application has been turned down

2:16 pm

Dear Congress: Your credit application has been turned down.

You may also wish to contact a consumer credit counseling agency. The National Foundation for Credit Counseling can help you locate a reputable counseling agency in your area. You may also wish to visit the NFCC’s website for helpful tips on such subjects as

•drawing up a budget
•living within your means
•saving during tough economic times
•steps to take when your finances get out of control

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“The mood was less than cordial.”

9:31 am

Boehner meets with tea party activists from his district. “The mood was less than cordial.”

Surely, there are Tea Party activists with unreasonable expectations of what Republicans can accomplish with control of the House. However, the major beef Tea Partiers have with Republicans is not their lack of accomplishment. It’s their unwillingness to stand and fight, their apparent lack of principle, and the resulting impotence toward shifting the narrative in Washington.

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Senate Democrats: Where is your budget?

6:32 pm

Senate Democrats: Where is your budget?

With the statutory committee deadline having been missed by six weeks, and with 744 days gone by since the Democrat-led Senate passed a budget, it was reported that this week Senate Democrats would finally produce a budget and hold a markup. But no budget was produced and the markup was delayed yet again.

The Republicans might not be very serious about spending cuts, but the Democrats are a downright joke. At least the Republicans have made some effort to deal with the problem, tepid as that effort is. The Democrats not only oppose any suggestion, they can’t even do their job.

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Another sign of tight NASA budgets ahead

3:45 pm

From Jeff Foust: Another sign of tight budgets ahead.

The possibility that NASA’s budget might cut by several billion doesn’t bother me a bit. Unlike it seems everyone else, I ain’t gonna be one of those who says “We need to cut the federal budget, but just don’t cut MY favorite program.” NASA shouldn’t be immune to cuts. In fact, NASA could easily lose the several billion dollars per year that’s going to be wasted on the program-formerly-called-Constellation.

And if Congress decided to cut the subsidies to the new commercial space companies as well, I probably wouldn’t cry that much over that either. I think these companies can make it on their own. I think there is a market for their product. By taking NASA’s money up front, they are then forced to take NASA supervision, something I think will be very damaging in the long run.

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GOP denies TSA money to buy more body scanners

12:49 pm

The House budget for the TSA has deleted funding for more body scanners.

Though I think denying the TSA this money is a good thing, this paragraph from the article stood out to me:

The measure includes $7.8 billion for the TSA, which Republicans said was a $125 million increase from current levels but $293 million less than the administration’s budget request.

In 2008 the TSA’s budget was approximately $6.99 billion. Considering how the Republicans wanted to bring spending back to 2008 levels, how can we take them seriously about getting control of the deficit if they agree to an overall budget increase for the TSA?

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GOP senators focus on entitlement cuts

9:03 am

More debt ceiling negotiations: GOP senators focused on entitlement cuts in a meeting with Obama on Thursday. I found this quote quite intriguing and a refreshing change from previous such meetings:

Obama was careful not to dominate the meeting, according to Republican senators who attended. The president opened the session with brief remarks and spent most of the session listening to lawmakers’ concerns and responding to their arguments.

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White House Takes Dim View of Boehner Debt Plan

3:55 pm

No surprise here: The White House takes a dim view of Boehner’s speech yesterday.

So my question here is there: Who is more serious about controlling spending, Obama and the Democrats or the Republicans in the House? Though it is very easy to find lots of reasons to criticize the various Republican proposals, at the moment they are the only proposals that are willing, even on a tiny level, to consider entitlement reform.

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“Without significant spending cuts and reforms to reduce our debt, there will be no debt-limit increase.”

10:57 pm

I like the sound of this: “Without significant spending cuts and reforms to reduce our debt, there will be no debt-limit increase.”

Also this: “We should be talking about cuts of trillions, not just billions. They should be actual cuts and program reforms, not broad deficit or debt targets that punt the tough questions to the future.”

And this: “And to those who contend that the economy is too weak to take on the challenge of entitlement reform — I would simply say, you’ve got it backwards. The truth is that making fundamental reforms to these programs would be good for the economy — and good for the next generation.”

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Are astronomers finally going to push for a replacement for Hubble?

2:52 pm

Astronomers are considering the merger two space missions to create a new optical/ultraviolet space telescope. The mission would be designed to do both deep cosmology and exoplanet observations.

The two communities would both like to see a 4–8-metre telescope in space that would cost in excess of $5 billion. “Our interests are basically aligned,” says [Jim Kasting, a planetary scientist at Pennsylvania State University]. Such a mission would compete for top billing in the next decadal survey of astronomy by the US National Academy of Sciences, due in 2020.

This story is big news, as it indicates two things. First, the 2010 Decadal Survey, released in August 2010, is almost certainly a bust. The budget problems at NASA as well as a general lack of enthusiasm among astronomers and the public for its recommendations mean that the big space missions it proposed will almost certainly not be built.
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