Constellation program at "high risk," NASA reports

The headline above and report below was posted in the Wall Street Journal on April 21, 2009.
NASA says it is $1.9 billion short of the funding it needs to achieve an initial launch of the Constellation program by September 2014. The space agency's most pessimistic report to date is seen as strengthening the hand lawmakers who want to extend the life of the space shuttle beyond its scheduled 2010 retirement.

The lawmakers that want to extend the space shuttles life beyond 2010 to save the cost of $1.9 billion of the Constellation program, have they contemplated what the cost would be if one of the three shuttles is destroyed? What would be the cost for the lives of seven astronauts? I realize that the revenue NASA would lose in those four years of not doing experiments for companies in weightlessness would be costly, But look at the alternatives. There would be no risk in possible disasters with any of the three space shuttles and it would reduce climatic weather disasters as well as the ozone hole recovering by a couple of millon miles or more.