Up to half of NASA’s research and science budget is on the chopping block by the Trump Administration. The proposal has spurred several Maryland lawmakers to fight it.
“We will lose engineers and others to China,” said Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen. “In fact, they’re launching a major space exploration initiative. This is no time for the U.S. to retreat.”
The plan from the White House is to reduce NASA’s bottom line from a little more than $7 billion to just under $4 billion this fiscal year.
Van Hollen teamed up with Congressmen Steny Hoyer and Glenn Ivey on Monday to tour the Goddard Flight Space Center in Prince George’s County.
Some of the biggest cutbacks are aimed at the Goddard Space Flight Center, where the $3 billion Nancy Grace Roman telescope, set to launch in the fall of next year, is almost complete.
Van Hollen said pulling the plug on the Roman telescope is a waste of money. The project is on budget and set to launch on time.
“We saw it. This is almost finished,” he said. “And yet they’re talking about flushing all of those tax dollars down the drain.”
Congressman Glenn Ivey says engineers aren’t the only ones who will feel the pain. He fears many of the businesses near the center will shutter.
“There’s a lot of businesses that do work directly connected to NASA,” he told a group of reporters gathered outside Goddard. “In fact, the only reason they’re here is because of the Goddard installation. We need to make sure we support those.”
Ivey said the steep budget slash at NASA would drive top talent away.
“An article I saw over the week was written by a young scientist coming out of the PhD program, and he’s starting to look overseas,” said Ivey. “He and his classmates are looking at Europe and India because there’s more stability and funding there.”
As the lawmakers unveiled their concerns, Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland said he plans to urge fellow lawmakers and the White House to roll back the proposal.
“We’re going to fight this with every fiber of our being,” he said. “And I project that Congress is not going to do this because it makes no economic sense, no competitive sense or national security sense.”
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