VICTORY !!! Taxpayers for Common $ense is going ape, pounding our chest to celebrate the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) decision on April 22 to end U.S. taxpayer support for a Russian program to put monkeys in space.

One year ago on tax day, TC$ launched a campaign to tell NASA to get the monkey off the taxpayer’s back. Now NASA agrees that it’s bedtime for Bion’s monkey missions.

During 1996, TC$ used guerilla warfare to stop the program. The House voted to end the monkey business, but the Senate voted to revive it. Then in January, the Russian monkey Multik died after a Bion flight. An independent advisory board warned of further problems and NASA finally threw in the banana peel.

The monkey mission – called Bion – was a cooperative U.S./Russian project to send rhesus monkeys on 14-day space flights on unmanned Russian satellites. The monkeys were used 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 would result from more monkey trips. Furthermore, NASA had already conducted half a dozen similar missions using monkeys, as well as two shuttle missions dedicated to studying the effects of space on humans.

NASA’s decision to stop funding the program will save taxpayers $6.1 million according to Congressman Tim Roemer (D-IN).

Stop Underwriting the Undertaker

Urging the government to get out of the tobacco business, two bipartisan bills were introduced in Congress on April 23. The identical companion bills would end taxpayer subsidies for tobacco crop insurance through the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The House bill was introduced by Representatives Dianne DeGette (D-CO) and Frank Riggs (R-CA). The Senate bill was introduced by Senators Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Judd Gregg (R-NH).

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