When Democrats
suggest that the Federal government should spend billions of dollars to
create jobs the response of Republicans is swift and predictable. To do so they argue will only increase the
burden of debt on future generations, result in job killing tax increases, be a
waste of money and besides, government has never ever created a single
job. Chief among these spokespeople for
this position is another of the Washington Post’s many, many Conservative columnists,
Charles Krauthammer.
For example, here is
Mr. Krauthammer arguing
vigorously against government spending to create jobs.
What is national
greatness, scientific prestige or inspiring the young — legacies of NASA — when
we are in economic distress? Okay. But if we’re talking jobs and growth,
science and technology, R&D and innovation — what President Obama insists
are the keys to “an economy built to last” — why on earth cancel an
incomparably sophisticated, uniquely American technological enterprise?
We lament the decline
of American manufacturing, yet we stop production of the most complex machine
ever made by man — and cancel the successor meant to return us to orbit. The
result? Abolition of thousands of the most highly advanced aerospace jobs
anywhere — its workforce abruptly unemployed and drifting away from space
flight, never to be reconstituted.
Whooops! Sorry, this
is not a tirade against federal spending to crease jobs, it is a tirade for
federal spending to create jobs, specifically for the U. S. to continue the manned space
program. Because if we don’t China will.
Yep, there’s a huge argument for spending tens of
billions, if we don’t China
will walk on the footprints the U.
S. left on the moon. Gosh, how will we ever survive as a nation?
Now just to show everyone that Mr. Krauthammer is not
a sane person, i.e., he is a typical Conservative, in the same piece he argues
for cutting Federal spending.
But
there is no reason the federal government has to keep spending 24 percent of
GDP. The historical postwar average is just over 20 percent — and those budgets
sustained a robust manned space program.
That’s right, at the same time he is advocating a
huge new Space Program, Mr. Krauthammer is arguing just as strongly for a cut
of about 25% of Federal spending as measured as a percent of GDP. No he doesn’t identify the programs to be cut
but presumably he means education, environment, energy, health care and other
programs that unlike manned space exploration just waste money with no benefit to the public.
Mr. Krauthammer does end on a promising note,
although that’s probably not the way he sees it.
NASA
will tell you that it’s got a new
program to go way beyond low-Earth orbit and, as per Obama’s
instructions, land on an asteroid by the mid-2020s. Considering that
Constellation did not last even five years between birth and cancellation,
don’t hold your breath for the asteroid landing.
Wow, the best news of the day. If forces contrive to cancel a program of
landing a person on an asteroid, well we can only say that sometimes good does
triumph over stupidity.
We will need volunteers for this extremely patriotic asteroid landing...Newt, Charlie, Herman, Mitt, Ricky, Michelle...where are you?
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