Democrats Attack Bush's Failure To Fully Fund NASA Vision

摘要

Democrats marked NASA's 50th birthday by criticizing U.S. President George W. Bush for failing to provide the funding needed to adequately pay for the new direction he set for the U.S. space agency four years ago. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), his party's presumptive nominee for U.S. president, commemorated the July 29, 1958, signing of the legislation creating NASA by issuing a statement calling for a revitalization of the agency's mission to assure continued U.S. leadership in space. In that same statement Obama also took an indirect swipe at the Bush administration. "In recent years, Washington has failed to give NASA a robust, balanced and adequately funded mission," Obama said in the statement. "Though the good people of NASA who work day in and day out on new frontiers are doing amazing things, Americans are no longer inspired as they once were. That's a failure of leadership." Presumptive Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain of Arizona marked the anniversary with a statement of his own, taking a shot at an Obama proposal to put off NASA's proposed 2020 return to the Moon by five years to help fund an education initiative.