Budgets Imperil Environmental Satellite
* NASA’s Earth Observing System was conceived in the 1980s as a 15-year program that would collect comprehensive data about the planet’s oceans, atmosphere and land surface. It was originally intended to send three generations of spacecraft into orbit at five-year intervals, but budget shortfalls limited the project to only one round of launches.
* Landsat, a series of satellites that have provided detailed images of the ground surface for more than 30 years, is in danger of experiencing a gap in service. Landsat 7, launched in April 1999, is scheduled to be replaced by a next-generation satellite in 2011. But if the existing satellite fails before that date and NASA has not developed a contingency plan, scientists, land managers and others who depend on Landsat images could be out of luck.
* The launch of a satellite designed to measure rainfall over the entire Earth, the Global Precipitation Measurement mission, has been pushed back to 2012. But the satellite it is designed to replace, the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission, can’t possibly last that long. That means there will be a period of several years when scientists have no access to the accurate global precipitation measurements that help them improve hurricane forecasts and predict the severity of droughts and flooding.
* In December, scientists working on the Hydros mission received a letter canceling their program. They were developing a satellite that would measure soil moisture and differentiate between frozen and unfrozen ground, an increasingly important distinction since melting of the Arctic permafrost has accelerated over the past several decades. The satellite also would have improved drought and flood forecasting.
* Last month Scripps’ Valero was notified that the Deep Space Climate Observatory, a project he has led for more than seven years, would be canceled. The spacecraft has already been built, but NASA is reluctant to spend the $60 million to $100 million it would cost to launch and operate it.
Bush has annouced that he wants the line-item veto to get some of this spending under control. Many of us have our doubts, including Senator John Kerry, John Kerry to Introduce Line-Item Veto Proposal – “Let’s Hold the President’s Feet to the Fire”
“It’s no secret that President Bush and I don’t agree on much, but I fully support giving him the line-item veto. I’m going to introduce this legislation, Congress should immediately pass it, and I want to see President Bush use this veto pen to get tough on wasteful spending. Under this Republican-led House and Senate, pork barrel spending has gone through the roof. Nearly $30 billion a year is being spent on projects that have never even been debated. Billions of taxpayer dollars are being wasted on things like research to enhance the flavor of roasted peanuts and the infamous ‘bridge to nowhere.’ We have the largest deficit in American history, and the guys in charge are acting like teenagers with a new credit card.
“Let’s pass this line-item veto, and let’s hold the President’s feet to the fire to make sure that a White House that has never once vetoed anything starts vetoing the incomprehensible waste coming out of this Congress.”
Retirement Fund Tapped to Avoid National Debt Limit
The Treasury Department has started drawing from the civil service pension fund to avoid hitting the $8.2 trillion national debt limit. The move to tap the pension fund follows last month’s decision to suspend investments in a retirement savings plan held by government employees.
In a letter to Congress this week, Treasury Secretary John W. Snow said he would rely on the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund to avoid bumping up against the statutory debt limit. He said the Treasury is suspending investments and will redeem a portion of the money credited to the fund.
Once Congress raises the debt limit, the Treasury will “restore all due interest and principal” to the pension fund as soon as possible, Snow said. He made a similar promise when the Treasury announced that reinvestment of some assets in the Thrift Savings Plan’s government securities fund, or G Fund, had been suspended.
The civil service trust fund will provide the Treasury with several billion dollars for extra borrowing. The fund had an estimated balance of about $655 billion at the start of the year, but only a small portion of that is available to the Treasury because of the statutes restricting the fund’s use during “debt issuance suspension” periods. The G Fund has assets of about $65.3 billion, and all are available for Treasury’s use.
The Treasury has leaned on federal employee retirement funds in past years when officials worried about a possible default on the national debt, and most federal employees take it in stride. Still, many employees object to the financial maneuvers, arguing that they amount to a raid on their personal accounts.
