I get the sentiment. But, there are A LOT of other lines in the Federal budget that I would much rather see gone before this one. Some of them I would gladly trim at risk of personal job security. Whatever our motivations were for starting it, US Human Space Flight brought a lot of wonder to my childhood and is no small part of the reason that I’m an engineer, a pilot, and doing the particular job that I’m doing these days. My personal opinion is that we lost something as a country, maybe even as a species, when we let real exploration, and the learning that comes with it, take a back seat to ceaseless bickering over partisan junk and the endless “social” programs of voter-pandering wealth reallocation.
So, yeah, count me in with Paul. Light those candles and let ‘em fly.