Obama's Right Stuff

First, the bad news.

In an Oct. 25, 2007 editorial titled "Lyndon Baines Bush," we noted that George W. Bush was the biggest spending president since Lyndon B. Johnson — and that was before the numerous bailouts he authorized. "(T)he damage to the nation has been ... immense," we wrote.

That now seems quaint in light of the proposed budgets President Obama released Monday.

The Bush White House in 2008 projected the federal deficit in 2009 to be $400 billion. The actual number was a staggering $1 trillion higher. Obama's response has been to complain about the Bush profligacy (justifiably so) and then ... propose spending even more than his predecessor.

As fiscally irresponsible as Bush was, Obama seeks spending increases and budget deficits that consume even greater shares of GDP than what occurred from 2002-2009. Yet, he has the chutzpah to announce as he unveils this monstrosity that, "We simply cannot continue to spend as if deficits don't have consequences." But spend he does.

That's the big picture. It isn't pretty. It's enough to give green eyeshades the blues.

Now the good news: President Obama killed the Bush-era plan to return to the moon.

Granted, it's a lonely note sounding in the midst of a cacophony of fiscal foolishness. Nevertheless, it makes you weep not only for its simplicity and soundness, but also for its greater policy implications.

The Bush administration's Constellation program proposed putting Americans back on the moon by 2020. NASA already has spent some $9 billion developing a new rocket for the trip — a vehicle that is still years from its first scheduled crew flight.

It already is over budget and behind schedule.

Constellation from the beginning was controversial even among space enthusiasts, many of whom questioned the scientific value of going somewhere humans already have been. They preferred a fresh, bolder approach, such as a manned mission to Mars. Returning to the moon looked too much like Apollo nostalgia, without the concurrent "gee whiz" factor and with an unaffordable price tag that produced little bang for the buck.

But what is most appealing about the end of Constellation was the direction the president turned: away from government-directed space exploration and toward commercialization.

Critics — many of who are in Congress and fear the spigot of NASA dollars to their districts being turned off — complain that the new Obama policy means "the end of U.S. human spaceflight." But the private sector already has been making progress in developing vehicles for "space tourism" in low-Earth orbit. The administration proposes plowing the money saved from Constellation into developing commercial spacecraft that could taxi astronauts into orbit. That would lead to zero-gravity research into commercially useful applications (such as pharmaceuticals) that will attract private capital and, hopefully, lay the groundwork for wider exploration of the solar system.

Granted, these payoffs are many years away. And there are always pitfalls in government "partnering" with private markets. But Obama has broken with his predecessors and taken a step in the right direction, away from central planning and control that has kept the U.S. space program in low gear for 40 years.

If only he could apply that philosophy to other areas of his bloated budget.

REPRINTED FROM THE PANAMA CITY NEWS HERALD.

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