Congressman Ron Paul, who has attracted some voter support, particularly in New Hampshire, has not talked about space policy during this campaign, but did in 1988 when he was the Libertarian Party nominee. At that time he was critical of the lack of progress NASA had achieved over the previous two decades. “NASA has cost our nation a full twenty years in space development, twenty years that has seen the Soviet Union surpass us to an extent that may well be irreparable,” he states in a position paper from that 1988 campaign (one that apparently did not foresee the imminent collapse of the Soviet Union.) “It is inconceivable that a private firm could have committed such follies and survived. NASA deserves no better.”
Paul, who was not in Congress during that 1988 campaign, has been in Congress for over a decade now (he previously served in the House in two periods from the mid 1970s through the mid 1980s), in a district that includes some Houston suburbs near the Johnson Space Center. When the House passed its version of a NASA authorization bill in 2005, one of the few roll call votes in recent years on space-specific legislation, Paul did not cast a vote. He did, though, vote in favor of the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act (HR 5382) in a critical November 2004 vote after being the only member to oppose an earlier version of the bill that March.
