The total station economy is about $800 million dollars a year, and about $90 million comes from the government. In the long run, we would be better off without federal funding.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Frankly, it is clear that we would be better off in the long run without federal funding, and the challenge right now is that if we lost it altogether, we would have a lot of stations go dark.
There is no question that we are in a period in which we are going to have to use those sources to fund about 35 million dollars a year that used to be paid for by the federal government.
What we get from building a space station, the economic return, the science return, is very, very important to our nation, to our economy.
The station put us on staff at $35 a week... and I mean every week.
If you take all the money we've spent at NASA since we landed on the moon and you had applied that money for incentives to the private sector, we would today probably have a permanent station on the moon, three or four permanent stations in space, a new generation of lift vehicles.
We can't do everything with a budget, but we can put the country on much sounder financial footing.
We have built a government so large and so expensive here in Washington that not even the richest economy in the history of mankind can afford it. That's how big it's gotten.
And let us not forget the Social Security system. Recent studies show that undocumented workers sustain the Social Security system with a subsidy as much as $7 billion a year. Let me repeat that: $7 billion a year.
Now we are flying off into outer space, there is no clear curb on what can be done in the name of the economy.
Federal program and services outlay in Puerto Rico is approximately $10 billion per year.