Source (http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090906/...e_usa_congress). ...Energy policy to compete with NASA to compete with Military to compete with Education to compete with... Ok - here's what this thread is not: It's not for debating the pros/cons aka individual merits of any of these spending programs. Rather, here's what this thread is for: It's to explore the possibility of finding some real synergy and collaboration, if not cooperative efforts, between the various camps who typically decry most, if not all, spending in apparently conflicting areas in order to garner more funds for themselves. Example: Environmentalists want spending in support of the climate change bill, but while they also support wind and solar, which require no energy spending, they refuse (in general) energy bill spending, yet nuclear provides the baseline _required_ for a variable energy system such as that offered by wind and solar. Here's another example: We're trying to reduce, if not eliminate our use of fossil fuels. Yet energy bill spending has a very good chance of resulting in refinements of the leading reactor technologies that would make their safe use in the largest cargo vessels a profitable venture, and bring nuclear power generation to remote settlements (many of which use diesel generators). Energy bill spending also supports potential wonders such as the neighborhood (15-home) solar reflector/Stirling engine generators. Well, that's just energy bill. How will spending on the other bills help further some of the goals of the competing requests for funds?