The House Appropriations Committee proposed Wednesday to kill the James Webb Space Telescope, the crown jewel of NASA's astronomy plans for the next two decades.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/07/scien ... .html?_r=3

Worst proposal ever.

An additional $1.6 billion? Boo hoo. That's excellent value for money, and unless the US want to fall behind again in space travel and science in general, they must not keep scrapping NASA's projects. The Chinese have a projected moon landing by 2020 and they have a billion and a half potential workers to back that target up. They will get the job done. China are going to leave the west behind if NASA doesn't get it's act together, and that isn't going to happen as long as bureaucrats keep standing in the way.

ESA should be given more funding as well...

Dunno, personally, I'm still waiting for that fusion reactor in France, but sure, would be nice if they cut military budget and invested it in this project.

NASA's budget isn't big enough to continue supporting a multitude of obscenely overbudget projects.

Current major costs:
International Space Station
Mars Science Lab (very overbudget)
JWST (obscenely overbudget)
R&D For the Shuttle's replacement.

It is a matter of practicality that one be cancelled. ISS is built and done and used. We're committed to it. MSL is built and about ready to go. JWST is far behind schedule and has not been build. And postponing US-based manned spaceflight is unacceptable to those who make the important decisions.