People tend to think it's a lot more of the federal budget than it is:
"For example, in 1997 the average estimate of NASA's share of the federal budget by those polled was 20 percent."
From <a href="http://bit.ly/aAg7I3" rel="nofollow">http://bit.ly/aAg7I3</a>
Er, try 0.58%. But this misconception is a real problem: if people think there's just <i>tons</i> of money in there, cuts don't seem like a big deal; in fact, they seem entirely reasonable.<p>Add to that the unwillingness of our political class (both parties) to do <i>anything</i> about spending and cost growth on defense, medicare, and medicaid and you've severely limited "what you can cut" to NASA and a handful of other programs, even though cuts to those are a fractional percent of the budget and barely enough to even register over a 10-year window.<p>Leadership takes hard decisions. Our "leaders" have shown no interest in same.