Tag: Congress

“Re-election is the farthest thing from my mind.”

12:44 am

We need more elected officials like this:

“Re-election is the farthest thing from my mind,” said Representative Tom Reed, a freshman Republican from upstate New York. “Like many of my colleagues in the freshman class, I came down here to get our fiscal house in order and take care of the threat to national security that we see in the federal debt. We came here not to have long careers. We came here to do something. We don’t care about re-election.”

0 comments

Being tone deaf is not a good way to fund a government space program

11:59 am

Yesterday the House appropriations committee’s released budget numbers that included no additional funds for commercial space, limiting the subsidies to $312 million, the same number as last year and significantly less than the $850 million requested by the Obama administration.

This is what I have thought might happen since last year. The tone deaf manner in which the Obama administration has implemented the private space subsidies is leaving all funding for NASA vulnerable.
» Read more

2 comments

NASA stalls, Texas lawmakers fume

10:12 pm

The law is such an inconvenient thing: In a bipartisan effort, Texas lawmakers roast NASA administrator Charles Bolden for not meeting mandated Congressional deadlines for Congress’s personally designed rocket, the program-formerly-called-Constellation.

The heavy-lift rocket and capsule that Congress insists NASA build is a complete waste of money and nothing more than pork. It will never get built, mainly because Congress has given NASA less money and less time to build it than they did for Constellation under the Bush administration. Unfortunately, the reason they continue to require NASA to build it is to provide pork to their districts.

In a perfect world this funding would be cut now, especially considering the state of the federal debt.
» Read more

5 comments

House spending panel cuts John Holdren’s science office budget by 55%

7:18 pm

The House spending panel today proposed cutting the budget of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) office, run by John Holdren, by 55%.

“OSTP has chosen to disregard a strong and unambiguous legislative prohibition on bilateral engagement with China or Chinese-owned companies,” says language accompanying the 2012 bill, to be voted on tomorrow by the full appropriations committee. “OSTP’s behavior demonstrates a lack of respect for the policy and oversight roles of the Congress.”

I think the Obama administration is about to discover that ignoring the law as passed by Congress can have bad consequences.

0 comments

House Budget Bill Would Leave it to NASA To Apportion Bulks of Cuts

9:49 pm

The House bill that brings NASA’s budget back to 2008 levels essentially leaves it to NASA to figure out what to cut.

If true, what this means is that NASA itself will have to choose what it considers important. The one problem is that according to this article Congress is still requiring NASA to spend $3 billion on the program-formerly-called-Constellation. which gives the agency less flexibility in doling out the cash.

0 comments

NASA continues to stall on heavy-lift rocket

10:41 am

It ain’t ever happening: NASA continues to stall on their final design for Congress’s mandated heavy-lift rocket.

No one should be surprised by this. Obama has never wanted NASA to build this rocket, when it was Constellation and now when it is the program-formerly-called-Constellation. Moreover, Congress hasn’t given NASA enough money or time to do it anyway. Better the program die and the money is used for something else, or cut entirely in order to reduce the crushing federal debt.

6 comments
1 … 81 82 83 84 85 … 105