Remember back in February when Barack Obama warned that America would feel the pain once sequestration kicked in? Among the federal agencies that would be hit hardest, he grimly noted, would be the National Parks Service, whose budget would be slashed by $100 million.
Maybe Reps. Donna Edwards (D-Md.) and Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas) simply weren’t paying attention when the president spoke. How else to explain the bill they co-authored. H.R. 2617, also called the Apollo Lunar Landing Legacy Act, asks Congress to fund the establishment of the Apollo Lunar Landing Sites National Historical Park.
And where do the Congresswomen envision building the park? On the moon, of course. “As commercial enterprises and foreign nations acquire the ability to land on the Moon, it is necessary to protect the Apollo lunar landing sites for posterity,” the bill reads. The park would be comprised of all artifacts left on the surface of the moon from the Apollo 11 through 17 missions.
As The Hill notes:
Under the legislation, the park would be established no later than one year after the bill passes and would be run jointly by the Department of the Interior and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
Give Edwards and Johnson credit. Maybe they’re just so forward-thinking that they can envision a time when the nation is over its current economic hurdles and— more importantly — when travel to the moon is so commonplace that families will head there rather than to Wyoming for their summer vacation.
As for heeding the president’s dire warnings, Edwards and Johnson are not to be faulted it they tuned him out. Obama seems to have tuned himself out. On March 25, a month after warned of the belt tightening to come, he designated five new national monuments.
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