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People tend to think it's a lot more of the federal budget than it is: "For example, in 1997 the average estimate of NASA's share of the federal budget by those
by TetOn 17y ago
People tend to think it's a lot more of the federal budget than it is:
"For example, in 1997 the average estimate of NASA's share of the federal budget by those polled was 20 percent."
From http://bit.ly/aAg7I3 http://bit.ly/aAg7I3
Er, try 0.58%. But this misconception is a real problem: if people think there's just tons of money in there, cuts don't seem like a big deal; in fact, they seem entirely reasonable.
Add to that the unwillingness of our political class (both parties) to do anything about spending and cost growth on defense, medicare, and medicaid and you've severely limited "what you can cut" to NASA and a handful of other programs, even though cuts to those are a fractional percent of the budget and barely enough to even register over a 10-year window.
Leadership takes hard decisions. Our "leaders" have shown no interest in same.
- apowell 17y agoThat's a really fascinating poll. I'd really like to see similar data on the perceived cost vs. actual cost of other federal programs -- do you know if anyone has conducted such a study? It would be interesting to see how people respond when asked only about one or two pieces of the budget, vs. being asked to "complete the pie" by estimating the federal budget when looking at it as a dozen (or so) components totaling 100%.
- yardie 17y agoNot to mention that out of the 50 states only 3 really benefit from the NASA budget. Aerospace tends to be highly concentrated around Alabama, California, Florida, and DC (obviously). Without the support of the 47 other states NASA becomes an obviously easy target.