Money needs to go to science
To the editor:
NASA announced a new rocket system that can take people to Mars and needs some 35 billion dollars over the next 10 years to develop it. Republicans are asking, “Where’s the money going to come from?” So how do we pay for it?
If we were to get out of Afghanistan and Iraq 3 1/2 months earlier that would pay for it. Or we could end the tax cuts for the rich one year early. We could pay for NASA with about 1/2 of what we gave Bank of America in the bailout. Or about what we spent to save General Motors and Chrysler.
When Wall Street calls for money we hand them trillions, but when we want to explore the galaxy we have no money for that. I think that humanity needs to start putting science before war and start figuring out how to become a multi-planet species because the Earth isn’t going to be around forever.
One big natural disaster and we’re all gone.
As far as the deficit, the President and Congress have said that in order to cut the deficit that “everything” has to be on the table.
Does “everything” include the pensions that members of Congress get?
It seems to me that if anyone should get their pensions cut it should be Congress because they are the ones who passed the unbalanced budgets that created the debt in the first place. They want us to put Social Security on the table.
The way I see it if Congress doesn’t cut their pensions then not everything is really on the table.
Marc Perkel
Gilroy, Calif.