believer;703022 wrote:I'll make ya all a deal. Keep your fingers off my SS contributions and I'll look the other way while NASA launches and crashes their taxpayer funded $424 million duds....or scuds.

O-Trap;703063 wrote:Dear lord. This sounds like, "I won't pick on the financial sinkhole that you like if you don't pick on the financial sinkhole I like."

gut;703558 wrote:But the key difference is social security is not, in and of itself, wasteful or inefficient. It's an underfunded ponzi scheme, but I do agree that we need to eliminate waste and other inefficiencies before we basically expropriate more wealth from taxpayers (SS is basically $1 in, $1 out after administrative expenses).

And this thread really illustrates the problem. People don't want to touch NASA because it does add value and does provide a return, but that's simply the wrong approach/question. It's defeatist to say "$10M here, $400M there...it won't make a dent" and such a position is how you get a budget spiraling out of control because after filling a few thousand hands being held out it DOES add-up to be very significant. There has to be fiscal discipline across everything and all the way down. I do not support looking the other way or cutting too deep or cutting something meaningful because other far more wasteful/inefficient expenses are deemed too trivial.

O-Trap;703572 wrote:Oh I agree. I was speaking more to the way it was said.

A single nail cannot destroy a cinderblock. When many of them are fused together to form the head of a mallet, however, that changes.

Bigred1995;703651 wrote:I would challenge that one would! I bet if I pumped up the psi on my nail gun, I'd blow a cinder block to hell!

O-Trap;703665 wrote:Damnit, 95. Why'd you have to rain on my metaphor?

O-Trap;703063 wrote:Dear lord. This sounds like, "I won't pick on the financial sinkhole that you like if you don't pick on the financial sinkhole I like."

believer;703778 wrote:But my point is and has been all along that this country is broke. Perhaps NASA's budget is chump change in the overall budget and I will grant that some of the technologies developed by the space program are now benefiting the greater good, but the fact remains that even NASA should be subject to intense budget scrutiny as well as all federal spending programs.

I keep harping on the Social Security issue, but for good reason. If I had been free to route the $250,000 that has been confiscated by federal mandate from my labor over 40 years into my own choice of investments (IE: paying off my house, 401K, savings, whatever), none of the "we gotta cut entitlement" types would calling me a self-centered Boomer for expecting a return in full for my mandated "investment." Now the same people who label me a moron for attacking NASA's budget are generally the same folks who think I should sacrifice my quarter of a million dollars to payoff the national deficit caused by decades of Beltway incompetence and corruption including the fine people running NASA.

So when these folks splash a $425 million climate change rocket or have multiple orgasms at finding space spores while we're running trillion dollar deficits, you'll excuse me for thinking, "WTF?"

O-Trap;703784 wrote:I'm not in disagreement about some of the thoughts on NASA. However, whether I'm being forced to contribute into a Social Security program through employment or being forced to contribute to NASA through taxation, waste is waste if it takes us further into debt.

HitsRus;704298 wrote:NASA is not the problem...it has never been part of the problem...nor will it ever.

HitsRus;704298 wrote:Well what is it then...."waste is waste" or you concede that NASA research provides benefits? You can't have it both ways. You can't concede that NASA research provides benefits and then say 'waste is waste'. Nor could you expect that funding something like NASA is going to be 100% without failure.

gut;704440 wrote:Entitlements ARE NOT the problem

O-Trap;704425 wrote:Damn, sounds like you're ready to take over!

I bet you can just taste those meaty leading man parts in your mouth, eh?

Tobias Fünke;704451 wrote:Completely disagree. I don't disagree that NASA's budget can be trimmed in this time of budgetary crisis. But it's mere pennies, even when you add it all up it's not going to get the job done.

Look at Medicare and Medicaid. Trim the defense budget withe the same vigor you want to bring towards NASA (whose inventions have yielded billions in tax revenues) and direct it towards the Pentagon and you'll save the country's budget.

Would we really losing anything cutting $2B from that budget??? $4B???

HitsRus;704470 wrote:Hey, good luck with that fella. $100 billion/year in NEW healthcare entitlements, $150 billlion a year to maintain armies in Afghanistan and Iraq. New Medicare entitlements...all since taxes were cut in the Bush Administration.....and you want to go after NASA or any other minor contributor to the deficit. Go for it.... here's your bucket. I'm all for cutting waste at NASA, or anywhere else, but don't try to sell me that it's going to solve anything. Yammering at NASA is a distraction from what really needs to be done.....makes one feel good...like you are actually doing something. I've got no problem with current entitlements like Social Security. That actually a pretty easy fix once you get the other stuff handled.

gut;704467 wrote:That $1 I pay to SS is, theoretically, ear-marked for me at age 67 or whatever. So when you are proposing cuts to programs like SS you are, in fact, advocating a raise in taxes. Yes, higher taxes are inevitably part of the solution. But I refuse to endorse raising taxes until the economically illiterate fucktards in Washington show they have a clue. I'm not giving another dime to Washington until the dime I already gave that got split between reps of two different states where I don't live goes back into the pot.