Mr. President, there's no such thing as a free launch

EJ Dionne has a great read on Bush's proposed initiative to inhabit the moon. He points out two very important things here: (1) Bush Jr's continuous borrowing from future generations:

"But that is the beauty of this administration's approach: It's not asking current taxpayers to finance this adventure. It is going to keep cutting taxes and is putting only modest new sums into NASA...[the first President Bush] was willing to bear the burden of financing the government through those tax increases that helped doom his chances for reelection in 1992. The current president, by contrast, is leaving behind a trail of IOUs: his tax cuts, a Medicare drug plan whose full costs won't be felt for years to come and now a promise of the moon and Mars for his successors to keep."

and (2) the fact that Bush Jr ain't askin' the masses what we want to do with our taxpayer money (Dionne highlights some important health-related facts about inner-cities):

"How many Americans know -- I didn't -- that the percentage of children with asthma has more than doubled since 1980, from 3.6 percent to 8.7 percent; that deaths from asthma have increased by more than 75 percent; that 25 percent of all children in central Harlem have asthma? These numbers come from an IAF paper that, I warn you, makes for gruesome reading: "The explosion of asthma and other respiratory problems has been triggered by the overwhelming presence of roach droppings and rat urine in the projects and tenements that house these children." When these hazards are "combined with the harsh pesticides and cleaning agents often used to remove pests . . . you have the polar opposite of an oxygen tent in a sanitized hospital room."...So here's an offer: We'll forget that this President Bush is being a copycat on his Mars endeavor if he begins an experimental program to make our inner cities more habitable for the humans who live there."