NASA funds better spent on Earth

The decision by President Barack Obama to end the manned space flight program at NASA has produced some rather odd critics. Conservatives that are typically up in arms over government spending are suddenly shocked and offended by spending cuts. Instantly, government programs became a job creating force, one that, when taken away, will leave a black hole in the economy.

In a press release on his website, Gov. Rick Perry criticized Obama for leaving our astronauts stranded, having to “hitchhike” into space. Local KTRH radio talk show host Michael Berry, who normally advocates smaller government and regularly attacks tax-and-spend liberals, spent a full hour of his show chatting with callers about what a detriment to the economy this program cut would be. Callers from private aerospace and defense companies such as Lockheed Martin called to illustrate the disastrous aftermath that will ensue when they are no longer awarded government contracts, and how badly the economy of areas such as Clear Lake would suffer.

But these people are all falling into a logical fallacy that they usually are apt to avoid. In their contempt for a president that they do not like ending a romanticized government program that they do like, some conservatives have begun engaging in Orwellian doublethink, reviving the left’s debunked arguments and using them as their own.

Following the logic of these new-found government spending proponents, one could devise an excellent solution to their criticisms. NASA could start paying astronauts to orbit the earth 24 hours a day, seven days a week for the next 100 years. Considering how great the shuttle program has been economically thus far, let’s up it to ten shuttles — that will really get the government contracts flowing. Think about all the astronauts that will be hired to man the shuttles, the petroleum employees needed to produce the rocket fuel, the steelworkers needed to weld the frames and fuselages; for a second, one would almost think it’s an economic gold mine.

What is not seen, and therefore never discussed, is what these resources would have been used for had they not been first taken through taxation and then funneled into NASA’s bloated annual budget in order to be burned up in outer space. The money the government spends does not magically appear in the coffers of federal bureaus such as NASA. In order for it to get there, it must first be taken from John Doe’s paycheck every month.

So here’s my question: What proof does Perry have that NASA knows how to spend John’s money better than he does? To what evidence does Michael Berry refer to in order to claim that the nation would be wealthier and more prosperous if the federal government continued to spend billions of dollars every year in order to fly men and women into space? The simple answer is that there is no evidence. NASA is a government bureau like any other created by Congress. It does not produce wealth, it merely consumes it.

In “Essays on Political Economy,” economist Frederic Bastiat wrote, “I am, I confess, one of those who think that choice and impulse ought to come from below and not from above, from the citizen and not from the legislator.”

Some true conservatives are smiling and holding out hope for the day when choice indeed comes from below and private industry sends man into space. Cutting the government’s hegemony over spaceflight may just be the next giant leap for mankind.

Steven Christopher is an economics alumnus and graduate finance student in the C.T. Bauer College of Business and may be reached at [email protected].