According to a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll, two out of three Americans believe our country is on the wrong track and nearly six in 10 say that the economy has not even started to recover. Under President Obama, 20 million Americans are out of work, underemployed, or given up looking for a job. Another recent poll found that a majority of Americans believe that the United States should "continue to be a world leader in manned space exploration." These two polls — one about Americans' sense of our country being on the wrong track and the other about American leadership in space — have more in common than you might think. America's space program is on the wrong track. NASA's industry partners have recently announced massive layoffs of many thousands of highly-skilled engineers and technicians who previously worked on the space shuttle as it now retires and on NASA's canceled Constellation program. We are on the wrong track because these layoffs are due to the Obama administration diverting nearly $3 billion per year out of NASA's manned spaceflight budget from what was planned under President Bush's budget projection.
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