As millions of Americans rushed to file their taxes on April 15, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) plans to waste $33.2 million of U.S. taxpayers’ money to orbit Russian monkeys in outer space. In protest, Taxpayers for Common $ense released a letter on April 12 to NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin asking him to withhold U.S. money from the project. The letter was accompanied by a mock 1040 MONKEY form featuring the “Space Monkey Check-Off Box.”

In his letter, Ralph De Gennaro, Executive Director of Taxpayers for Common $ense said, “We have no objection to experimenting on monkeys or putting them in space. But we strongly object to the cruelty to U.S. taxpayers of making them pay for this nonsense. April 15 is bad enough without this kind of needless suffering. Let the Russians use their own rubles for this monkey business.”

The monkey missions – called Bion 11 and 12 – are two cooperative U.S./Russian/French space flights scheduled for August 1996 and July 1998, respectively, on uncrewed Russian satellites. Two Russian-owned Rhesus monkeys will fly on each of the 14-day missions intended to study the effects of microgravity on people and animals.
Since humans have already stayed in space for 439 days at a time, little or no useful information about the effects of weightlessness on the human body will result from the planned 14-day monkey trips. Furthermore, NASA has already conducted five similar missions using monkeys, as well as two shuttle missions dedicated to studying the effects of space on humans.

If NASA stopped the program now, almost $27 million could still be recovered.

Balanced Budget or Highway Pork?

The same week the House will consider the Balanced Budget Constitutional Amendment, it is scheduled April 17 to consider H.R. 842, legislation to take the Highway Trust Fund off budget. The cement lobby and Rep. Bud Shuster (R-PA) want to go hog wild on highway pork – deficits be damned. The bill would increase the deficit by $20 billion and is opposed by The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, the Federal Reserve Board, the Clinton Administration and the House Budget Committee.

is a loss under Congressional rules. Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) – who usually does not vote – helped force the tie when he cast his vote against the amendment. Before he became Speaker, Rep. Gingrich had supported a similar