Mittens: GOP Magic Fairy-Dust and NASA

Romney and Ryan are still selling those good old GOP magic beans: That the government can do all manner of fantastic things with just a little bit of reorganization.

The GOP ticket says it would refocus NASA, providing it with "practical and sustainable missions" rather than increasing funding. The agency said it spent over $18.4 billion dollars in fiscal year 2011, though its 2013 funding request was slightly lower - about $17.8 billion.

So we should keep trying to expand space exploration, but not pay anything more to do it, because Mittens will do what-- close down the research centers and send NASA's jobs offshore?

Republicans have been babbling for the last 32 years about how they can save money by reorganizing the Federal government. For 20 of those years, they have held the presidency. And what have they done? How many Federal agencies have they reformed to make them smaller?

George W. Bush created the most recent Cabinet-grade monstrosity: The Orwellian-named Department of Homeland Security, which is now the government entity charged with making sure that the 1st, 4th, 5th and 6th Amendments mean nothing. Republicans have been in the forefront of ensuring that continues. They have shown no appetite for cutting off some of the hydra-heads of our national security state.

No, the only Federal agencies that the GOP has ever had a taste for blood about have been those that have tried to prevent banksters from robbing us blind or have tried to prevent corporations from fouling the air and water supplies of the nation.

Which should come as no shock to anyone.

(H/T)