Government Compromise: Cut Less of Everything!

NASA likely to be spared much of the ax, as reported by the Houston Chronicle via Boston.com:

The acrimonious political schism between the White House and Congress over NASA's manned space program is expected to end tomorrow with a compromise that provides President Obama the funding for commercial spacecraft while Congress will preserve NASA-built systems for deep space exploration.

The deal crafted by two of the leading NASA supporters — Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas, and Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida — could blunt expected cuts at Houston's Johnson Space Center and the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla.

The House is scheduled to vote tomorrow to adopt the Hutchison-Nelson arrangement, which would scrap some of NASA's marquee back-to-the-moon program, extend operations of the orbiting space station, and add one last space shuttle flight. It would also hand the White House 75 percent of the $812 million sought next year to support a burgeoning commercial spacecraft industry.

Katherine Mangu-Ward from February on why NASA should not be a jobs program. I wrote on the glorious past of the military-industrial complex's attempts to sell the space program in Reason's October issue.