First, I need to correct myself re: NASA's budget -- it's actually 16 billion, not 6.
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Again, we need to do something right now as gas prices climb to $4/gal in some places!!! You are quite good at bringing up counterpoints to anything and everyting I say, so what do you propose we do about gas prices RIGHT NOW? We are not in a situation in this country to lower our demmand substantially, so what should we do???
Quite frankly -- I don't think there's much that we can do. There is no fix that will even begin to take a noticeable effect on gasoline demand within 20 years.
Throw some Government money (I know you don't want to hear that), or at least larger tax incentives, to get the Big Three to invest in Alternative Fuels -- Real alternatives. Not the ones we have currently in development that use fuel that currently takes more energy for us to create than they would use.
Only when we settle on a fuel can we begin to incent petroleum companies to install fuel sources in a quick manner across the nation.
Reduce our reliance on plastics. We use more petroleum energy every day in the creation of hydrocarbons for plastics use than we do in gasoline.
We're talking a multiple-decade long approach though.
Eliminating the gas tax entirely would only save $0.40/gallon. As you said, we're reacing $4.00/gallon -- that's only 10% decline. That's nothing. The societal and economic impact of removing the social programs you prescribe to make up the difference would be enormous. The price of everything would skyrocket as the minimum wage would have to be adjusted. It's not worth the savingson gas.
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Maybe you think that its is money well spent, I don't like the idea of funding artists livings so they can make art for a living. If you can't make a living off of it, its a hobby and you need a real job, and make your art on the side.
Artists traditionally don't make a living off their art. Certainly you've heard that only after a artist dies are his painting worth anything.
I'm not a huge art fan either -- but I know that all great societies are remembered as much, or more, for the art that they created than for most everything else they accomplished.
I think it's, largely, a worth-while cause.
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Im not sure exactly what you are saying here, but I think you are saying that we should raise taxes so we can get back to that holy grail of a surplus that we supposedly had under Clinton? Well, if you are, then you need to understand that the government has no way of making money, therefore any 'surplus' they have is because they took too much money in! Clinton did not lower our spending by any means, he just took more money in than he needed to.
Well, unfortunately, we're in the hole about 10 trillion dollars. The only way to pay that back is to have a surplus.
Without a surplus when you get years like this one, you just increase your debt load. And without a surplus you never pay that back. Meaning you just get more and more in debt.
What I was saying is that we spend more on interest payments alone on our debt than we do on all our social programs combined. Meaning that paying off that debt would have the same fiscal impact as eradicating every social program. 
