One Small Step for Man, One Giant Leap for Deficit

Bethany Widman

In a democracy, one would presume that she would have a voice, whether it be little or large. So I ask, what happened to America's? Did it get sucked into a shell like Aerial's, the red headed mermaid?

Probably not. America's voice lost itself somewhere between the tumbling towers in New York and the false war against a third world country.

Bush has officially started a plan to put a manned space station on the moon by the year 2020 and perhaps eventually put a man on Mars somewhere thereafter, costing an estimated $12 billion on the new space exploration plan over the next five years.

In a recent Time/CNN poll, approximately 48 percent of Bush's own Republican party are opposed to this idea, and only nine percent of the public surveyed is willing to dump billions of dollars into space exploration.

So where is America's voice? It is lost within the bowels of the overzealous government so eager to impress and too proud to admit that their country is in debt up to their ears. If more than 40 percent of the population of America believes that their hard-earned money should go toward the advancement of education rather than a joy ride to the cosmos, doesn't it make sense that that is where their money should go?

Understandably, with the discretionary budget request wanting nearly $400 billion for military advancements and asking for only $55 billion for education, there have been some eyebrows raised as to what Bush means to get across with this message of military over education.

This mission to the manned space station on the moon seems to be a childhood dream of a little boy somewhere in America. To spend my hard-earned money on something that won't even benefit the country in any way, shape or form makes me wonder why my parents and I work so hard just to have our money shipped up to the moon.

At this point Bush should be focusing on more important things, such as the national debt, welfare reform, the thousands of acres of destroyed national forests and perhaps even education.

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