Radical Conservative Columnist Charles Krauthammer Proposes Massive New Government Spending Program - Wants Government to Commit to Billions to Produce/Save Jobs

What Kind of Conservative Is He?  -  Oh, The Regular Kind, Hypocrite

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.

China goes for the glory. Having already mastered launch and rendezvous, the Chinese plan to land on the moon by 2025. They understand well the value of symbols. And nothing could better symbolize China overtaking America than its taking our place on the moon, walking over footprints first laid down, then casually abandoned, by us.

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.