Grassley says more funding should go to space program

Even before Saturday’s destruction of the space shuttle Columbia, Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley says he supported pumping more money into NASA. President Bush’s budget proposal for 2004 contains significant funding hikes to the space agency, which Grassley says he favors.Grassley says he’s glad the President put the money in the budget -before- the accident so people wouldn’t get the idea it was just put in to “look good” or as a knee-jerk reaction. He says Congress is more likely to approve the money now that there’s been an accident.The Bush budget proposal would boost NASA’s overall budget by more than three percent to 15-point-five billion dollars. That includes a more than four-percent raise for the shuttle program to almost four billion dollars.