Maryland Lawmakers Hope To Restore Funding For Generation Space Telescope

It was just last week that NASA announced they'd finished polishing the mirrors for the James Webb Space Telescope. Now, the future of the instrument is looking dim, after a House Appropriations Committee voted to cut it's funding.

Maryland Democrat Donna Edwards is condemning the decision.

"We've already invested so much money into it, I mean, it seems ridiculous to stop at this stage when it is 75 percent complete," says Edwards. "And once you do that you don't restart technology like that if somebody changes their mind next year. So this is a real concern."

Republicans say the program has gotten too expensive, rising from $1 billion to more than $6 billion.

Maryland Democrat Barbara Mikulski chairs the Senate subcommittee with jurisdiction over the telescope. She says the House vote will kill 2,000 jobs nationwide -- 500 of them in Maryland alone. She's calling for the funding to be restored when the bill goes to the full appropriations committee on Wednesday.