Good-bye, National Aeronautics and Space Administration. I will truly miss you. By closing you down, I am forced to give up hope that a Star Trek future lies before us. I am giving up hope that American ideals will guide some sort of United Federation of Planets. I am giving up hope for peace on Earth.
It takes real wealth, to maintain a space program, and the United States is in debt. We have no wealth to call upon. Our savings rate, which is the relationship of people's incomes with the amount of money that they've got in the bank, is negative. That means that, on average, not only do Americans have nothing in the bank for a rainy day, they are borrowing money, every month, just to put food on the table.
I remember when political debates always included the sentiment that, "We're the richest nation on earth! Surely, we can afford...[insert your favorite massively-expensive spending program, here]." If those days aren't gone, they should be. America is in debt to the tune of $8.5 trillion, and the head of the General Accountability Office is saying that the size of that debt will go up by FIVE to EIGHT times, in the next 20 - 30 years. Heck, we had to borrow $620 billion, last year, just so the Government could make ends meet.
I've taken on this project, to balance the Federal budget. That means I've got to slice $620 billion from that budget, leaving the Federal Government only a bit more than $2 TRILLION to run the country with. I've already closed down the National Institutes of Health, the Pell grants program, and the Department of Agriculture. NASA is the next to go. I need it's budget of $16.3 billion, in order to help plug the hole in our Federal finances.
No more International Space Station. No more trips to Mars. No more Space Shuttle. No more military satellites monitoring the surface of the globe. No more GPS satellites that allow your cell phone to give you directions to your next destination. No more XM radio satellites. At least, if those satellites ARE going to be maintained, it will be someone other than NASA who does the job.
It's almost funny, in some sick kind of way. I'm practically weeping, as I lift up my budget axe, preparing to chop off another limb of the Executive Branch of Government. Still, I take the swing. I have to. If I don't, the fate the country faces will be worse than you can imagine. The Depression of the last century will be nothing, compared with the suffering that will be visited upon the United States, if we don't get our financial house in order. "Boo hoo...," I moan. "Chop!" goes the axe.
NASA is history. That's $16.3 billion saved. $468.2 billion left to go. "Next!"