NASA OVER BUDGET! SUPRISE OF THE CENTURY!

Wasn't it just the other day I was ranting about NASA blowing 600 million pointless dollars on a telescope to find exoplanets we'll never visit nor actually know anything about beyond the fact that they are there?

Well surprise of the century, it turns out that NASA is completely incapable of staying within its estimated budgets. In the last year alone, NASA has blown its budget by $1.1 billion. This is a continual problem, so much so that NASA's former chief resigned last year and wrote an op-ed about how the money shifting at NASA had driven him out.

Here, NASA auditors found that NASA had 9 major projects...all over budget. Included in this list is my favorite, the Kepler planet finding telescope. NASA is currently a whopping $97.3 million over budget on that single piece of equipment.

Frankly, I'm getting tired of talking about NASA and their intense overspending of taxpayer dollars for projects that won't fundamentally help America in any tangible way other than the "gee whiz factor". But what I really want to point your attention towards is back in that first article, where it says that because of NASA's budget woes, the Federal Government is giving them $1 billion to help out. That money will come out of the latest stimulus that just passed.
So instead of cracking down on NASA's fiscal waste like was done under the Bush administration, where they were put under the same rules as the Defense Department (any projects that go 15% or more over budget require Congressional approval. Any projects that go over budget at all require committee notification.), instead we will now just give them more money and let them continue their ways. Part of the reason for this surely is that many of the current NASA projects are aimed at proving human-made climate change is a real problem, which is classically a thorn in the eye of the denialist Republican party, so the Democrats of course are going to continue funding those projects, with whatever money it takes.

Don't get me wrong. I love space, and sweet new technology. But I love fiscal responsibility, and low taxes just as much, if not more.


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