What does Congressman Mike Haridopolos think about NASA moon mission? I asked. | Opinion
Brevard County's freshman congressman, Republican Mike Haridopolos, has had a busy first few months in Washington. I caught up with Haridopolos late last week, a few days after he hosted a virtual town hall, answering questions from Brevard County residents for about an hour.
We spoke about many topics and at length about the DOGE cuts and what that meant for USAID especially. I wrote that up as a separate column. Here are some of the highlights from the rest of the conversation. We touched on several topics from Medicare and Social Security to NASA's planned Artemis missions.
Q: There seems to be mixed messages from Trump regarding the space program. Is it the plan still to go to the moon first then Mars?
Haridopolos: This is that we expect: to go to the moon first. Artemis II is scheduled to go off supposedly in April of 2026 and I've said very clearly to NASA that if they stay on schedule and get it done in 2026 everybody's going to be happy. But if this thing gets delayed again, remember it's 10 years behind and it's 400% over budget.
I'm optimistic that they'll fly out Artemis II in April of next year and if that's done, I think again we're still on track. If it doesn't happen, I think that you'll see people want to take a second look and ask someone like SpaceX or Blue Origin to lead the mission because NASA has let them down.
And to make sure that everyone knew that they have our support, remember not one NASA employee got let go. The only people who left are the ones who voluntarily left and were taking that buyout. We, meaning myself, Rick Scott, the US senators from Texas and Alabama and representatives from Texas and Alabama said to the president: "Look, we need to make sure that we keep all hands on deck."
Q: There's a lot of concern regarding the national budget and what the future holds for social security and Medicare. What can you tell us?
Haridopolos: First and foremost, unlike in Florida where they have a balanced budget and required by our constitution, that is not required in Washington. As we all know, we have an approximate $2 trillion ― that's trillion with a T ―shortfall and they dramatically increased spending over the last 40 years. So, what you have to do is look at every program and ask yourself a very basic question: What do you want versus what you can afford?
And we have taken a very strong position on a couple of things. One is that Social Security and Medicare will not be touched because those are earned programs. You paid into them or your employer paid into them if you're employed by someone else. You've earned that by working all these years. We're not going to touch Social Security or Medicare. But every other program we have to look at and say: 'OK how can we right size this? How can we get rid of waste, fraud and abuse? We're gonna have to make some big tough decisions like what happened when people saw some of the let's just say curious spending at places like USAID.
Q: Why is there so much pushback on DOGE efforts to identify and eliminate waste in the government?
Haridopolos: It shows the absolute disconnect between people in the private sector and what's happening in Washington. The fact that they would be offended by being asked the simple question (about their productivity).
If I see a suspicious charge on my Amex bill, obviously I don't want them to pay that bill until I know it's a legitimate charge. so that's all DOGE is doing. If it's finds out to be a legitimate charge, then of course they'll pay the bill. But if it's something nefarious or you're unsure, no person would ever pay a bill if they thought there could be waste fraud or abuse.
Whether it be at the grocery store or anywhere else for that matter, you're looking for the best price and that's especially when you spend other people's money. It's their responsibility, as a elected official or a person who works in government. It comes off as very arrogant when they're unwilling to respond to an e-mail or show the receipts or have transparency. That's one of the bills actually I'm working on as we speak. We need to put U.S. government in the sunshine like we do in Florida and that will bring a lot more openness. If they think it's a good program they should want to put it out there in public and if it's a bad idea maybe they wouldn't even do it in the first place.
Q: There's been a lot of discussion about President Trump enacting tariffs on goods coming in from other countries. Haven't these countries been charging us tariffs for years?
Haridopolos: All Trump has said is whatever you tax us, we're going to tax you. I mean, we're not living in the 1945 time period when countries were decimated by war. This is 80 years after the end of World War II. Every country should have to compete on a level playing field and it's unfair when we're paying taxes on cars at 10% when we sell to them and they only get charged 2 1/2%.
Q: The situation regarding US aid to Ukraine seems to change daily. What's happening?
Haridopolos: There's a a difficult diplomatic situation going on. Remember they (Ukraine) said to the European Union (EU), the countries that helped them got an economic promise. So why wouldn't they give the United States of America the exact same deal?