[caption id=”attachment_83800″ align=”aligncenter” width=”1024″]AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall, File
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Sen. Ted Cruz has been appointed to chair a Senate Commerce subcommittee that oversees government science agencies. This has been trending news for days now.
The Huffington Post’s reporting of the information, that Cruz has taken the helm of the Subcommittee on Science, Space, and Competitiveness, has been liked on Facebook almost 100,000 times. Gizmodo authored the erroneous “8 Dumb Quotes About Science From New NASA Overseer Ted Cruz,” which attributes to Cruz a quotation spoken by Florida Sen. Bill Nelson, a Democrat. “Oh dear, they’ve put Ted Cruz in charge of NASA,” Salon wrote. “Yup, a Climate Change Denier Will Oversee NASA,” a headline on Slate reads. Remember that NASA stands for “National Aeronautics and Space Administration.”
It’s that last point Cruz stresses.
“We must refocus our investment on the hard sciences, on getting men and women into space, on exploring low-Earth orbit and beyond, and not on political distractions that are extraneous to NASA’s mandate,” he said in a statement. “I am excited to raise these issues in our subcommittee and look forward to producing legislation that confirms our shared commitment to this vital mission.”
24,000+ people who have signed a White House petition demanding Cruz’s removal from the chairmanship — which is hilarious — are decidedly less excited.
“He is scientifically illiterate, and constantly shows bias against scientific proof and facts against his own personally held religion and beliefs.”
A few things here. Cruz, who represents Texas — a relatively crucial state to aeronautics — is a natural person to serve on this subcommittee by geography alone. He was its ranking member in the previous Congress. Also, now that Republicans are in the Senate majority, chairmen of the authorizing committees and subcommittees — those who oversee budget recommendations for federal agencies — are uniformly going to be more fiscally watchful. It’s because the name “Ted Cruz” is associated with this news that the web has thrown a conniption. “Chairman Dean Heller” wouldn’t have created such a rage, I think.
And a word on the “competitiveness” part of this subcommittee’s name — Cruz wants the U.S. to regain its international standing in space exploration.
“Russia’s status as the current gatekeeper of the International Space Station could threaten our capability to explore and learn, stunting our capacity to reach new heights and share innovations with free people everywhere,” he continued. “The United States should work alongside our international partners, but not be dependent on them. We should once again lead the way for the world in space exploration.”
Sounds aspirational to me — which is what it should be. The U.S.’s ventures into space and its related programs have unearthed countless scientific discoveries and inspired optimism and dreams. The idea that this will end, all of the sudden, because Ted Cruz is in charge of one chamber’s subcommittee responsible for recommending legislation and budget levels of scientific agencies is ludicrous.
