Talk of a second stimulus has recently snuck into the dialogue, which comes as little surprise to the many who thought the original stimulus was too compromised. But, with all of the political capital President Obama had to spend on the first stimulus, and everything that’s going into the current healthcare debate, there is probably no way another stimulus will pass as a stimulus. So, here’s my solution:
Give money to NASA as a "secret" second stimulus.
Why should we do this? Well for a lot of reasons. But, for starters, I thought I'd point out that NASA had a budget of about 17 billion last year (or .7% of the total national budget), and it managed to send multiple people into space, sent robotic missions to other planets, launched satellites, repaired the Hubble Space Telescope, and increased the size of the International Space Station, among countless other things. While doing this, it employed thousands of people across the country, from engineers and manufacturers to managers, designers, and doctors, while also starting to prepare to go to the moon again.
To contrast it, what did they do with the 700 billion for TARP? Oh, right, after running our economy into the ground, the banks used that to pay of their debts and bought out other banks, all the while deciding not to loan any of us any money. Nice. What about the first stimulus? It was good, but it didn’t do enough, and it’s taking awhile for the money to get distributed as the states figure out what they need it for. So, it seems like another step is needed.
So, aside from that, here’s what’s currently going on with NASA. In August, the Augustine Commission will complete its review of the current and possible plans for the future direction of NASA, and after that, President Obama will have to decide what to do for space. Essentially, he can either axe NASA’s funding, which would do little to solve all of the other budget issues considering that whole .7% of the national budget thing (and would actually make things worse, considering the thousands more we could add to unemployment rolls), he can support the status quo of the Bush Administration, which will also lead to job losses as the shuttle retires, or he can pull a Kennedy and give NASA a distinct mission (moon or Mars) while, unlike Bush, actually providing the funding for it to be a reality.
So let’s say that he pulls the third option and doubles NASA’s budget (which would still be a far cry short of the 5% of the budget it was during the Apollo era). This would seem to cost him little political capital since NASA maintains good public standing on both sides of the aisle, and given its strong presence in Texas, Alabama, and Florida, it could actually be something bipartisan (surprise! Didn’t know we still had those types of issues, did you?) While it would be more money, its still pretty small compared to the money we paid out to the banks (85 billion to AIG, anyone?), and we’d have real results from it. Plus, given the recent 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing, it would provide a lot of good press to the president, and, should he decide to include the international community in the endeavor, it could be very good for him politically as well.
As far as the stimulus, by doubling the budget, NASA could extend the shuttle flights a year (which they may already need to do given recent launch delays) to keep people employed (although, as much as I love that bird, she needs to be retired soon), invest in the private sector in the hopes of possibly having a stop gap vehicle that can reach the space station and allow us to maintain our space flight capability after the shuttle is retired, allow us to keep the ISS operating and experimenting past 2016, and, if nothing else, drastically speed up the Constellation program (or whatever program is decided upon from the Augustine Commission) to allow us to access the space station, return to the moon, and get to Mars. While that’s all I need to want this to happen, for those that need more persuasion, this provides money directly to one of the most important facets of our economy, high technology. There are those that argue that we need to concentrate our resources here on earth, but it’s been said that there’s no place to spend money on the moon... everything that goes into that effort goes into our economy here, and that will actually create a lot of jobs. Besides that, there is a swath of technology that’s been created or advanced because of NASA (GPS, medical advances, smaller components for personal computers, etc.), and that would continue to happen with more investment. So, it seems to me that providing more funding to NASA would directly help the economy, our president, and our standing in the world, while doing very little comparatively to our massive national debt... which all sounds good to me.
Outside of all of that, if Obama wanted to take it a step further and be slightly more dangerous politically, he could announce a broader space and science initiative and use NASA’s popularity and necessity amongst senators and house members (could a representative from Houston really vote against any bill that doubles NASA’s budget?) to pass through additional education and research funds that would go even further to aiding the country. By doing this, he would both provide incentive, opportunities, and inspiration (which is kinda his thing) to our children, which would go a long way towards helping us to stay competitive in technology, produce more engineers and scientists, and make us an even greater country.
Thus, if we can’t have a second stimulus in name, then we should get a secret second one through under the umbrella of NASA. It’ll get results, it’ll help us now and in the future, and it’ll help us make those next steps out into the larger galaxy.