Interesting article in the Washington Post today about the effect of earmarks on NASA's budget and mission. Yesterday the NASA Administrator testified before a Senate subcommittee but was not asked about earmarks. Instead, he submitted a statement for the record and spoke with reporters after the hearing.
[NASA Administrator] Griffin pointed out that $568.5 million was real money for an agency whose total budget is $16.623 billion. It was a "record high in both dollar amount and number of individual items," the statement said, and needed to be offset "by reductions within NASA's budget" to "ongoing and planned NASA programs."
I feel about these earmarks the same way I always feel about earmarks," Griffin told reporters after the hearing. "Our budget is very limited. We have a strategy approved by Congress, and we can carry out that strategy . . . but every earmark, if it isn't coaligned with that strategy, is a fiscal distraction." Continue reading here.
