Moon Dreams ,Or kiss VA and retired benefits goodbye.

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Moon Dreams

Saturday, January 10, 2004; Page B06

BILL CLINTON used to be mocked as the first baby boomer president. He
was so undisciplined, the critics used to sneer: He thought life's
normal constraints and rules did not apply to him, and he lacked the
seriousness to impose priorities on his laundry lists of initiatives.
President Bush has escaped this critique, at least for the most part:
His frame is trim; his hair is trimmed; he seems the very embodiment of
discipline. But now this escape must surely end. A human settlement on
the moon? A manned flight to Mars? If Mr. Bush really does embrace those
objectives next Wednesday, as his staff suggests he will, it will be
fair to ask: Does he not believe that life's normal constraints and
rules apply to him? Does he lack the seriousness to decide priorities?


Actually, Mr. Bush's contempt for the constraints of fiscal prudence has
been evident for a long while. Some presidents before him -- Mr. Clinton
included -- made hard choices among competing spending programs, and
between spending and taxes. Mr. Bush spends money freely in all
directions and cuts taxes as well. Now he wants to colonize the moon and
eventually send Americans to Mars! The last time this idea was floated
-- by the president's father, in 1989 -- NASA put the likely cost at
$400 billion.

We are not against presidents who pursue big ideas, even expensive ones.
We can think of several worthy candidates, as we have said before: Make
sure that every child who qualifies for Head Start is actually covered
by the program; extend housing assistance to the 5 million American
families who qualify for it but nonetheless are excluded; and provide
preschooling and health insurance for all the nation's 4-year-olds. Mr.
Bush himself boasts several bold and, in our view, crucial initiatives
that require his continuing attention if they are to succeed: He has
launched a multifaceted assault on terrorism, embarked on
nation-building ventures in Afghanistan and Iraq, and promised to
greatly expand America's efforts against the AIDS virus.

Mr. Bush's AIDS initiative could stem the tide of a plague that is set
to kill more people than World War I, World War II, the Korean War and
the Vietnam War combined. It's not clear, by contrast, what practical
results, if any, would be yielded by Mr. Bush's moon-Mars agenda. A more
modest evolution in spaceflight technology -- officials Friday were
talking about a 5 percent increase in NASA's budget -- would be worth
debating in ordinary times. But Mr. Bush's past fiscal recklessness puts
a heavy burden even on modest proposals -- and flying to the moon is not
modest.

The success of NASA's latest Mars venture has proved the worth of
unmanned missions, while manned space flight is exorbitantly expensive.
After President George H.W. Bush proposed a return to the moon as a way
station for Mars, sticker shock soon ended the moon talk, and no doubt
the same may happen again. In which case the current President Bush will
have floated an unserious proposal, succeeding merely in sounding big
and capturing newspaper headlines.
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