Democratic Take Over Bad News for Space Program

Now that the Democrats have successfully taken over both houses of congress (it appears), there are likely to be grave consequences for both the American space program and the American people. I'll spare readers what I think of the new house and senate leadership -- you've got plenty of places in the blogosphere to get conventional political opinion-- and simply say the Republicans had it coming for the last several years of timid leadership.

The more important factor in this change is what it does to president Bush's plans for Moon and Mars exploration, what it will mean for a possible ballistic missile defense, and what the impact will be on NASA's overall budget.

While most of the democrats who won seats on Tuesday ran as moderates, the fact remains that the leadership of the party is stacked with radical, America hating far-leftists who have little use for a space program or anything that would make America safer. You can expect to see Bush's space exploration program under immediate assault, with democrats attempting to divert the money to other programs in an effort to buy votes in the next election cycle. Liberals of the ilk of Nancy Pelosi, Charles Rangel and (recently impeached for fraud) former Federal Judge Alcie Hastings will do what liberals always do: they will radically cut defense and high tech spending in order to fund these pet programs.

Richard's position is that the Space Initiative is too important to be cut, but I still think that real world politics may not reflect secret agendas. How vigorously Bush defends his plans will tell us a lot about which one of us is right.