1. United States
2. Pa.
3. Letter

I am writing to you today to oppose the proposed cuts at NASA. Here is a summary of what these cuts will impact: It will be a 24% cut across the board, effecting every NASA center. In particular, the Glenn Space Center in Cleveland will lose 40% of its workforce. It will cancel most science programs and will zero out STEM outreach. Thousands of high-skilled technical jobs (plus the jobs that support them) will be gone. It will also kill the research that feeds new technologies and new industries. This isn't just about the impact to the City of Cleveland or just about NASA. This is about the negative effects to America that ceding leadership in space, technology, STEM, and other scientific arenas will cause. The money represented by these cuts is a mere fraction of what's actually spent yearly by the US government, yet leaving these jobs alone will cause economic growth due to the discovery of new technologies and the formation of new companies. These proposed cuts are merely cutting off America’s nose to spite its face. Even worse than what I’ve listed above is the potential for ceding the moon to China. Seventy years ago, America launched on an ambitious effort to beat the Russians to the moon. Now we are faced with watching China mine the moon for minerals while we sit on Earth and lament the short-sighted nature of these budget cuts. I strongly urge you to preserve NASA’s funding and to stop preventing breakthrough scientific discoveries. If you truly want to make America great again, then you won’t hamstring our ingenuity by being penny wise and pound foolish.