Improving science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education is a top priority for the Obama administration. Among the goals of the president’s STEM initiative are developing American students’ scientific critical thinking abilities and closing the gap in STEM competency between foreign and American students. While developing STEM education is a laudable goal for the U.S. government, recent senatorial appointments contradict the STEM initiative by placing a scientifically inept politician at the forefront of space and environmental policy.

Ted Cruz, R-Texas, an opponent of NASA funding, a denier of scientific consensus and by extension a thorn in the side of the president’s vision of competitiveness, was appointed the Chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness on Jan. 8. The hypocrisy of the appointment is staggering. Cruz has referred to climate change as a “so-called scientific theory,” a statement that raises an easily-answered question: Who called it a scientific theory?

Nearly all climate scientists agree that climate change is happening now, that it is largely man-made and that it poses serious problems for our world. According to a NASA report, Cruz’s statements on the subject fly in the face of research from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Chemical Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Medical Association, the American Meteorological Society, the American Physical Society, The Geological Society of America, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the U.S. Global Change Research Program and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In a coincidental irony clearly lost on Cruz, referring to climate change as a “so-called scientific theory” is a strong statement in support of it.

The Common Core sixth grade science standards require that students are able to “distinguish among facts, reasoned judgment based on research findings, and speculation in a text.” Cruz, of course, missed the boat on the standards, a fact that his utter disregard of rigorous scientific conclusions based on empirical evidence demonstrates. Dissecting the senator’s quotes, while a morbidly entertaining exercise, distracts from the enormity of his very real power.

Cruz’s position places him at the head of the Subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness. Despite his limited grasp of science, he is no stranger to opposing its advance. In 2013, he attempted to skewer NASA’s funding while paying token homage to the importance of the United States’ “continued leadership in space,” a mantle he ostensibly believes can be upheld cheaply. The James Webb Space Telescope, arguably NASA’s most promising new project, is expected to cost almost $9 billion over its lifetime.

Complicating the matter further is the fact that Cruz is a senator for Texas, home to the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center — which itself is home to 15,000 sweet, sweet American jobs. Somehow I doubt that Cruz has forgotten about the 1,700-acre swath of land in his home state from which flaming metal objects are repeatedly launched into the sky. And somehow I doubt that he has never heard someone say “Houston, we have a problem,” a phrase that highlights his state’s long history of space exploration. I am convinced that the man is genuinely averse to scientific inquiry and that Houston — and America — have a problem of cosmic proportions with him.

Whether or not space exploration and science will make America globally competitive, I believe that their financial starvation will make us demonstrably worse off. NASA research has led to countless technological breakthroughs, including lightweight breathing apparatuses for firefighters, safer school bus chassis, the pumping mechanism for artificial hearts, GPS systems and even imaging methods that have allowed scholars to gain new insights from previously illegible first-century Roman manuscripts.

The appointment of Cruz to a subcommittee chairmanship for which he is undeniably unfit is a small piece of a much larger puzzle — a systemically flawed American Congress. Committee appointments are rarely contested, much less overturned. The result is a Senate that does not reflect the current administration’s priority to improve scientific education, much less the priorities of the people who voted it into power.

Noah Kane is a Weinberg senior. He can be reached at [email protected]. If you would like to respond publicly to this column, send a Letter to the Editor to [email protected].