[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 119 (Wednesday, September 4, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9799-S9804]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS AND HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT, AND 
             INDEPENDENT AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 1997

  The Senate continued with the consideration of the bill.


         Excepted Committee Amendment on Page 104, Lines 21-24

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the vote will now 
occur on the Smith motion to table the committee amendment.
  The yeas and nays have been ordered.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from Oregon [Mr. Hatfield], 
the Senator from Alaska [Mr. Murkowski], and the Senator from 
Pennsylvania [Mr. Santorum] are necessarily absent.
  I further announce that, if present and voting, the Senator from 
Oregon [Mr. Hatfield] would vote ``nay.''
  Mr. FORD. I announce that the Senator from New Jersey [Mr. 
Lautenberg] is necessarily absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
who desire to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 42, nays 54, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 266 Leg.]

                                YEAS--42

     Abraham
     Akaka
     Baucus
     Biden
     Boxer
     Brown
     Bumpers
     Cohen
     Conrad
     D'Amato
     Dorgan
     Faircloth
     Feingold
     Grams
     Grassley
     Gregg
     Harkin
     Hatch
     Helms
     Inhofe
     Jeffords
     Johnston
     Kennedy
     Kerrey
     Kerry
     Kohl
     Leahy
     Levin
     McCain
     Murray
     Nickles
     Pryor
     Reid
     Roth
     Smith
     Snowe
     Specter
     Thomas
     Thompson
     Warner
     Wellstone
     Wyden

                                NAYS--54

     Ashcroft
     Bennett
     Bingaman
     Bond
     Bradley
     Breaux
     Bryan
     Burns
     Byrd
     Campbell
     Chafee
     Coats
     Cochran
     Coverdell
     Craig
     Daschle
     DeWine
     Dodd
     Domenici
     Exon
     Feinstein
     Ford
     Frahm
     Frist
     Glenn
     Gorton
     Graham
     Gramm
     Heflin
     Hollings
     Hutchison
     Inouye
     Kassebaum
     Kempthorne
     Kyl
     Lieberman
     Lott
     Lugar
     Mack
     McConnell
     Mikulski
     Moseley-Braun
     Moynihan
     Nunn
     Pell
     Pressler
     Robb
     Rockefeller
     Sarbanes
     Shelby
     Simon
     Simpson
     Stevens
     Thurmond

                             NOT VOTING--4

     Hatfield
     Lautenberg
     Murkowski
     Santorum
  The motion to lay on the table the committee amendment on page 104, 
lines 21-24, was rejected.
  Mr. BOND. I move to reconsider the vote.
  Mr. LOTT. I move to lay that motion on the table.
  The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, the underlying amendment is 
agreed to.
  The committee amendment on page 104, lines 21-24, was agreed to.
  Mr. FORD. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                           Amendment No. 5178

  (Purpose: To reduce the appropriation for the implementation of the 
   space station program for the purpose of terminating the program)

  Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Arkansas [Mr. Bumpers], for himself, Mr. 
     Kerry, Mr. Jeffords, Mr. Kohl, Mr. Simon, Mr. Wellstone, Mr. 
     Bryan, Mr. Feingold, Mr. Leahy, Mr. Bradley, and Mr. Wyden, 
     proposes an amendment numbered 5178.

  Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of 
the amendment be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

       On page 82, strike lines 6 through 7, and insert in lieu 
     thereof the following: ``sion and administrative aircraft, 
     $3,762,900,000, to remain available until September 30, 1998. 
     Provided, That of the funds made available in this bill, no 
     funds shall be expended on the space station program, except 
     for termination costs.''

  Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, as most of my colleagues know, this 
amendment would terminate NASA's space station program. This morning on 
the way to work, I was discussing this amendment with my administrative 
assistant, and we were discussing the fact that this is perhaps the 
fifth year I have offered this amendment in an effort to stop what I 
consider is a disaster in the making. She said, ``Why do you persist in 
doing this every year?'' That is an easy question to answer. The short 
answer is that I believe very strongly that we are embarked on the 
expenditure of $100 billion that, in the final analysis, is going to be 
considered by every physicist, every top medical man in the country, 
and by most Members of Congress, those who are willing to admit that we 
may have made a mistake, as a terrible financial disaster.
  We still have a chance to prevent that disaster. If we were to adopt 
the Bumpers amendment today, we have a chance to save between $50 and 
$74 billion. I invite all of my colleagues to look at the budget for 
the future. Defense continues to go up. Entitlements will continue to 
go up. Everything will go up, except that roughly 18 percent of the 
budget which we call domestic discretionary spending, within which lies 
this $100 billion for the space station.
  Do you know what domestic discretionary spending is? It is not Social 
Security. It is not Medicaid. It is not senatorial pensions, Government 
pensions, or military pensions. It is not interest on the debt. It is 
that very small portion of money that Congress still has some control 
over that determines the kind of nation we are going to be. It is the 
money we spend on education. How many times have I said that when 
American families sit around the dinner table in the evening and talk 
about what they love the most, it is not that Mercedes out in the 
driveway, it is not the farm out back, or that posh office downtown, or 
the country club and the golf course on weekends. It is their children.
  The more money you pour into wasteful spending, like the space 
station, the less you are going to have for the thing you love most, 
your children. When people talk about how much they love their 
children, what do they talk about? They talk about their education. 
What else? They talk about their children, long after the parents are 
dead, being able to breathe clean air and drink clean water. And where 
are the environmental constraints and improvements located? In domestic 
discretionary spending right there with the space station.
  When people talk about their children, they talk about how to keep 
them out of gangs, the place where so much of the crime in this country 
is located. Where is law enforcement found? Right in that small pocket 
of money for domestic discretionary spending.
  So this vote is about whether you believe in space. This vote is not 
about whether you get teary-eyed every time you see the shuttle take 
off. You are making a big, big decision, a big, big choice on where you 
want our country's money spent. For every dime you put into the space 
station, it is a dime that will not be available for our children's 
education. It will not be available for legitimate, honest-to-God 
medical research. It will not be available for all of those things that 
go right to the heart of what kind of nation we want to be.
  In 1984--some Members of this body remember it well--Ronald Reagan 
stood on the floor of the House of Representatives and he talked about 
the space station and how we were going to build a space station and 
have it completed by 1992. In 8 years we were going to build this 
monumental demonstration of our scientific skills. For how

[[Page S9800]]

much? $8 billion. That was the cost. By the time we spent $11 billion 
we didn't even have a good blueprint.
  So President Clinton came to town and said this thing is out of 
control. It is much too expensive. Back in those days it was called 
Space Station Freedom, and the cost was absolutely staggering. So 
President Clinton said, ``Bring me another plan.'' So they brought him 
this plan called the Alpha, and he signed off on it. But it is not the 
Alpha anymore. It is the international space station because the 
European Space Agency is participating. And Russia is going to 
participate, if we give them the money. They are totally incapable of 
participating otherwise.
  Mr. President, do you realize that we have been in space for almost 
35 years? We have been in space for almost 35 years, and the Russians 
have had a space station of one kind or another since 1971. For 25 
years the Russians have had a space station. The first one in 1971 was 
called the Soyuz I. Then there were five succeeding Soyuzes. Then the 
Mir, which they deployed in 1986 and is still there in 1996. The Mir 
has been up 10 years.
  You are going to hear during the course of this debate all of these 
monumental claims about what we have gotten out of the space program so 
far. You are going to hear people talk about AIDS, cancer, arthritis 
and all of the terrible diseases that people fear so much. I am going 
to respond on the front end right now by saying, ``Ask the Russians.'' 
They have had a space station up for 25 years. Ask them. What have they 
gotten? I will tell you the answer. Nothing. You are going to hear all 
kinds of exotic technical arguments about different kinds of cells and 
crystals, protein crystals, gallium arsenide crystals. You are going to 
hear about bone structure, cell structure, and what all you get in 
space.
  I am going to give you a bunch of quotes that are not particularly 
interesting to listen to, but I am going to quote them to you anyway 
before I finish this statement, where every single scientist in 
America, every physicist who is not on NASA's payroll, every medical 
doctor worth his salt in America, says that to try to justify the space 
station on the grounds of scientific and medical research is laughable. 
You will not hear me reading to you a statement prepared by NASA. You 
will not hear me reading a statement to you that was prepared in a big 
four-page ad by Boeing. I am telling you that I am not a scientist. I 
am not a doctor. You can tell me anything, and I cannot refute it. But 
I will let the experts refute the arguments for the space station.

  I used to say that I believe in picking the best brains in America. 
On any subject I can find the best brains. If I were going into 
anything, say, into the popcorn business, I would go to somebody that 
has been successful in the popcorn business. If I want to know about 
medical research, I might go to the Harvard Medical School. I will 
quote for you some of those people. If I were going to do something in 
an area of physics, I would go to somebody in the American Physical 
Society. Do you know who that is, Mr. President? The American Physical 
Society is 40,000 physicists. It is virtually every physicist in 
America. I will tell you before I finish this statement how adamantly 
opposed to this space station the American Physical Society is. I will 
tell you why the top medical people at Harvard and all across the 
country, from the Arthritis Foundation on down, are utterly opposed to 
the space station. You do not have to be a scientist to know the reason 
they are opposed to it. They are opposed to it because it is an utter 
misuse of the money.
  Let me digress for just a moment. I assume that most people in this 
body heard President Clinton's acceptance speech at the convention the 
other night, and you heard him say that in the past 4 years we have 
doubled the life of AIDS victims. That is a monumental success. Do you 
know what the space station had to do with that? Nothing. Do you know 
why we were able to do that for the people who are victims of AIDS? 
Because we put $12 billion a year out at the National Institutes of 
Health where real medical research takes place. How does it take place? 
The National Institutes of Health passes the money out to schools like 
the University of Arkansas, MIT, Harvard, and Pennsylvania and all of 
the other great universities of this country.
  It is those universities and the private sector who have been going 
all out to find a cure for AIDS, or something that would prevent it. 
But what is Congress doing? We are getting ready to drop another $74 
billion into the space station--$74 billion. Where I come from, $74 
billion ``ain't bean bag.'' When the year 2002 comes around, you are 
going to see this domestic discretionary spending account having gone 
from today's $264 billion to $220 billion.
  We are going to cut it $40 billion over the next 6 years. You tell 
me. How are we going to find the money to fund the things that we want 
to fund? We are not only going to have to cut $40 billion out of the 
account by the year 2002 but we are going to continue to fund this 
space station. It will be safely ensconced in that $224 billion.
  Mr. President, when it looked as though the space station might be in 
serious trouble, everybody said, ``Well, let's make it an international 
project. Let's get the Russians involved. Let's get Europe involved.'' 
And so we have been able to get them involved to some extent. But I can 
tell you that right now the Russians are 6-8 months behind. They are 
supposed to build a module where the astronauts will live and control 
the station. The Russians are going to build a module where the men 
actually live, or the men and women, whichever the case may be. They 
are behind. And the Russian Government has not given the Khrunichev 
Corp. that is supposed to build it any money to build it with.
  I am one who has favored virtually all the assistance we have given 
to Russia and will continue to do everything I can to help foster 
democracy in Russia because I think it is to our advantage and we are 
the beneficiaries. But if you think the Russians are going to come in 
on time and they are going to be able to launch all their Soyuz rockets 
right on time, you have to be smoking something.
  It is going to take 90, about, space shuttle flights to deploy the 
space station and to service it. You know something that is really 
interesting? How many times have you ever heard your mom talk about 
something that is worth its weight in gold? Well a pound of water sent 
by shuttle from Earth to the space station once it is deployed--1 pound 
of water, 1 pound of food, 1 pound of anything--will cost $12,800, 
twice the cost of gold. Can you believe that? Every time we launch that 
shuttle today it cost almost $400 million. We are going to have 90 
shuttle flights to deploy the space station and to service it and take 
food and water to our astronauts.
  And so when they talk about the $50 billion for these shuttle flights 
to service and maintain the space station, there is a big assumption, 
and the big assumption is that everything is going to happen right on 
time, that the launches will take place precisely when they are 
supposed to, they will arrive at the space station right when they are 
supposed to, they will hook up right when they are supposed to. The 
editors of Space News say it is utter folly to plan on that basis.
  The space shuttle was supposed to take off for the Russian space 
station Mir in July. But it was grounded for six weeks because of 
technical problems. Yesterday it was on the launch pad being prepared 
for a launch on September 14. Do you know where Atlantis is right now? 
It is back in the hangar. It is in the hangar in Florida because a 
hurricane is approaching Florida. So they had to probably download it, 
that is, take the fuel out of it, and put it in the garage. What if we 
were planning to launch the Atlantis today? We could not because of the 
hurricane. You say that is no big deal. It is a big deal. It cost 
millions every time you miss the target to take off in one of those 
things. To assume that every one of those missions is going to take off 
right on time and everything is going to go hunky-dory, as the General 
Accounting Office says, is the height of folly.
  Now, Mr. President, we have already built 17 percent of the hardware 
of the space station. That translates into 167,000 pounds. So the 
argument on the other side will be that we have gone so far, we have 
already put this much money into it; we cannot stop now. Lord, how many 
times have I heard that argument in 22 years I have been in the Senate. 
Once a month.

[[Page S9801]]

  I was absolutely the most shocked person in the Senate when we killed 
the super collider because I had listened to that argument for 3 years. 
Three years I had been trying to kill that thing. Incidentally, I do 
not take a lot of credit for that. The House killed it. The House 
killed it and held firm in the conference. We only got about 44 votes 
in the Senate to kill it. You cannot kill anything in the Senate that 
costs money. You can get a lot of noise about balancing the budget 
until you start trying to balance the budget.

  Two weeks ago Aerospace Daily said that the space station 
construction budget is already $500 million above target. If you think 
the current $94 billion estimate, which is what the General Accounting 
Office says it is going to cost, NASA says 72 or 3--I will put my money 
on the General Accounting Office. They say it is going to cost $94 
billion if everything goes perfectly from now on. Everybody knows it is 
going to cost more than that because everything will not go perfectly.
  On that night when Ronald Reagan assured the American people that we 
were going to build this space station in 8 years for a total cost of 
$8 billion, NASA also said here is what we are going to do with the 
space station. Here is the mission. Listen. This is 1984.
  No. 1, we are going to make it a staging base for future missions. If 
we decide to go to Mars, we will have the space station there. We can 
park a rocket there, refuel it and send it on to Mars. That mission is 
gone. No longer one of the missions.
  No. 2, we are going to make a manufacturing facility out of it. For 
example, we will manufacture crystals for computers. They will be 
perfect because they are made in space. Nobody can tell you quite why 
zero gravity is important. Most physicists will tell you it is not 
important. But everybody assumes if you do it in space it must have 
some kind of benefit, or you must be able to do something in space you 
cannot do anyplace else. I will come back to that argument in a moment.

  But, No. 2, it says we are going to make a manufacturing facility out 
of it--gone. It is no longer one of the missions.
  No. 3, we are going to make a permanent observatory out of it. I 
assume we were going to observe Mars and space and observe the Earth 
also. So, No. 3 was to make a permanent observatory, observing the 
stars and the planets--gone. No longer one of the eight missions.
  No. 4, we were going to make a transportation node, sort of a bus 
stop in space. But that mission is gone too.
  No. 5, a servicing facility. It will be a place where shuttles could 
park and get any service work done. If they had to recharge the 
batteries, put on new fuel, whatever. We could also repair satellites 
there. It was going to be a garage in space--gone. No longer one of the 
missions.
  No. 6, it was going to be an assembly facility where we would 
assemble a satellite or a spacecraft for further use, to go to Mars or 
maybe just to orbit the Earth or something else. That was the sixth 
one, to make an assembly facility--that is gone.
  No. 7, a storage depot, where we would store fuel and parts and 
supplies, a gas station in space--gone.
  No. 8, a research laboratory to study the impact of weightlessness--
that is still there. Of the eight original missions, seven are gone. 
So, with this mission of research laboratory now the only mission 
remaining, what are they going to do? They are going to do medical 
research, according to a very lengthy statement that was put into the 
Record by my very good friend from Ohio.
  Let me digress for a moment and say the Senator from Ohio and I came 
to the Senate together and we have become very close friends. He is one 
of the finest men I know. But he is entitled to be wrong occasionally. 
His wife, Anna, will tell you that. We just happen to disagree on this. 
We do not disagree on much.
  But when it comes to the kind of research you are going to do, let us 
talk about the life sciences, the medical research part of it. As I 
said earlier, I am not a doctor, so I have to depend on people that I 
respect, whose judgment I trust. So, here is then-Presidential Science 
Adviser D. Alan Bromley. He wrote the Vice President remarks on March 
11, 1991, and here is what he said:

       The space station is needed to find means of maintaining 
     human life during long space flights. This is its only 
     scientific justification, in our view. And all future design 
     efforts should be focused on this one purpose, how to 
     maintain human beings in space.

  He went on to say.

       The primary thrust of whatever life research is conducted 
     will be focused on manned space exploratory programs. 
     Medicine and commercial applications will be secondary.

  Carl Sagan--who, incidentally, favors the space station because he 
favors space exploration, but the purposes are quite different, 
according to Carl Sagan, than those of the proponents of the space 
station--said:

       The only substantive function of a space station, as far as 
     I can see, is for long-duration space flight.

  Before I forget it, here are the organizations who oppose this thing: 
The American Physiological Society, American Society for Biochemistry 
and Molecular Biology, American Society for Pharmacology and 
Experimental Therapeutics, American Society for Investigative 
Pathology, American Institute for Nutrition, American Association of 
Immunologists, American Society for Cell Biology, Biophysical Society, 
American Association of Anatomists.
  Let me continue. Here is what the American College of Physicians 
said, in April 1992:

       We agree that much if not all of the money slated for the 
     space station, the super collider, SDI, and for 
     defense intelligence could be better spent on improving 
     the health of our citizens, stimulating economic growth, 
     and reducing the deficit.
  Here is what the American Physical Society said on July 24, 1994. 
Bear in mind they speak for 40,000 physicists who are charged primarily 
with building the space station. Here is what they said in 1994:

       The principal scientific mission of the station is to study 
     the effects on humans of prolonged exposure to a space 
     environment. Medical researchers scoff at claims that these 
     studies might lead to cures for diseases on Earth.

  David Rosenthal, Harvard Medical School, testifying on behalf of the 
American Cancer Society. Listen to this:

       We cannot find valid scientific justification for the 
     claims that this will affect vital cancer research. Based on 
     the information we have seen thus far, we do not agree that a 
     strong case has been made for choosing to do cancer research 
     in space over critically needed research on the Earth.

  Dr. Sean Rudy, who runs the American Arthritis Foundation:

       I will submit to you the medical research done here on 
     Earth is of greater value than that planned in space. Space 
     station proponents have indicated that the space station will 
     provide a first-class laboratory. We used to have first-class 
     laboratories in universities and medical schools across the 
     country. Reports by the National Institutes of Health and 
     National Science Foundation have indicated that in over 51 
     percent of the biological laboratory research, space is 
     deemed inadequate for the conduct of research. Furthermore, 
     the National Science Foundation report estimated that the 
     capital construction backlog for lab research space is $12 
     billion. Should our priorities now be a first-class 
     laboratory in space or correction of a long-standing 
     deficiency in laboratories throughout the country?

  His point is not debatable, not arguable.
  Donald Brown, president of the American Society for Cell Biology, in 
an article in the Washington Post called ``Who Needs A Space Station?'' 
Here is what he said:

       In reference to experiments on cellular processes in normal 
     and diseased cells and organisms, there is no obvious need 
     for this research. It is extremely difficult to imagine what 
     special conditions space might provide for answering 
     important questions about the causes, diagnosis and treatment 
     of human diseases.

  Dr. James Van Allen--everybody has heard about the Van Allen 
radiation belt around the Earth. Here is what he, the world's most 
famous astrophysicist, said:

       There has been nothing that resulted from the manned space 
     program, essentially nothing in the way of extraordinary 
     pharmaceuticals or cures for disease or any extraordinary 
     crystals which have revolutionized electronics. Claims to the 
     contrary are false--not true.
  If you are not going to listen to people like James Van Allen, I 
might as well sit down and go home. If you are not going to listen to 
people like Alan Bromley and Dr. Rosenthal, what am I

[[Page S9802]]

doing standing here? What I am doing is quoting the top people in 
America, the people everybody should look to on issues like this.
  Then we have the subject of growing cells in zero gravity. For some 
reason or another, we have this cockamamie idea that if you want to do 
research, if you can just do it in zero gravity, somehow or another you 
are going to get some benefit that you could not possibly get on Earth.
  But here is what the Space Studies Board said on the subject:

       The promise of protein crystallography and potential 
     usefulness of microgravity in producing protein crystals of 
     superior quality should not provide any part of the 
     justification for building a space station. Growing crystals 
     of superior quality in space is not close, nor is it likely 
     to become close, to being cost-effective. It currently is, 
     and is likely to remain, faster and very much less expensive 
     to obtain superior quality crystals on the ground.

  On making industrial crystals, here is what T.J. Rodgers, the founder 
of a semiconductor company said:

       I run a semiconductor company, and I am director of 
     Vitesse, a gallium arsenide semiconductor company. So I know 
     about this stuff. All I can say is, this program of growing 
     gallium arsenide wafers in space is a colossal con job, and 
     there is nobody I know in my industry who wants those wafers 
     in the first place. There is no economic benefit to 
     increasing the purity of crystal beyond the point we can 
     currently improve it. The cost is huge, and the economic 
     benefit is almost nil for that last step.

  Namely, going into space.
  Dr. Al Joseph, founder of Vitesse, a gallium arsenide semiconductor 
company. I have met Dr. Joseph two or three times. Here is what he said 
on industrial crystals:

       The idea of making better gallium arsenide crystals in 
     space is an absurd--

  Absurd.

     business proposition. Even if you give me perfect and pure 
     crystals made in space, it won't help me commercially, 
     because 90 to 95 percent of my costs and 85 to 90 percent of 
     the integrated circuit yield on a wafer is driven by what I 
     put on the wafer and not so much by the purity of the wafer 
     itself. The cost of one trip to the space station would 
     finance just about everything the American electronic 
     industry needs to do to ensure its technological superiority 
     for years to come. That's for sure.

  I have never seen a project or a mission as desperate for a 
justification as this one. I look at those ads Boeing puts out. Of 
course, Boeing is the prime contractor. They stand to make billions out 
of this. And so that makes their efforts slightly jaundiced to me. I 
certainly understand why any Senator in Florida, Texas, California, and 
Maryland, I can understand why any of those Senators would vote for 
this. They have a lot of jobs in their State, and those jobs pay well 
over $100,000 each. The cost of this project in jobs will be the most 
expensive jobs program in the history of America, by far.
  On microgravity research, one of the most interesting statements I 
have seen was by Dr. Bromley when he talks about manned space flights 
and how important that is to microgravity. Dr. Bromley said:

       The human habitation of the space station is fundamentally 
     incompatible with the requirement that the microgravity 
     experiments be unperturbed.

  In other words, if you are operating in microgravity, you don't want 
anybody jarring around in the space station. And so he says, having men 
on board is incompatible with any research that requires zero gravity 
or even microgravity.
  The Space Science Board of the National Research Council said in 
1991:

       Continuing development of the Space Station Freedom cannot 
     be supported on scientific grounds.

  One article in Newsweek in 1994 I thought had the best one. ``What is 
the space station for?'' That is a question that nobody has been able 
to answer.
  The author said something which was demeaning in a sense to 
astronauts, which I am reluctant to quote. But he called them a bunch 
of people floating around in space looking for something to do. Well, 
they are all very brave men. We are always proud of our astronauts. I 
don't know when I have ever been prouder than I was watching our 
astronauts repair the Hubble telescope, a magnificent thing to behold 
and they saved the country a tremendous amount of money, simply because 
it was flawed in the first place.
  In 1995 the National Research Council's Space Studies Board said:

       The committee reaffirms the findings of the previous report 
     that there is little potential for a successful program to 
     develop manufacturing on a large scale in space for the 
     purpose of returning high-quality, economically viable 
     products to space.

  And the American Physical Society, once more:

       It is the view of the Council of the American Physical 
     Society that scientific justification is lacking for a 
     permanently manned space station. We are concerned that the 
     potential contributions of a manned space station to the 
     physical sciences have been greatly overstated and that many 
     of the scientific objections currently planned for the space 
     station could be accomplished more effectively and at a much 
     lower cost on Earth on unmanned robotic platforms or on the 
     shuttle.

  There are a lot more quotes I could give you. I am just telling you 
what all the top people in the country say.
  I think about the fact that we have been in space almost 35 years and 
we have had space stations up since 1971, and nobody walks in here and 
says, ``Here is where we found a cure for this,'' ``Here is where we 
make great advances of that.''
  Tang, Velcro, magnetic resonance imaging, Teflon--the space station 
had nothing to do with those.
  The space program had nothing to do with those. Yet those myths 
persist that somehow or other we have gotten Tang and Velcro and Teflon 
and all those things out of the space station. That has been debunked 
totally, so I will not use it anymore. But I will say this. There are 
not 10 medical doctors in this country who would support the space 
station if you gave them the option of putting this $2 billion into the 
National Institutes of Health, who in turn will put it out to the great 
researchers of this country to cure or make great advances toward 
curing some of the terribly incurable diseases we have--it is a no 
brainer. You think about the poor National Institutes of Health sitting 
over there able to fund only one out of every four good applications. I 
am not talking about one of four of all applications; I am talking 
about one out of four they would like to fund, that they consider 
viable, scientifically viable.
  I saw a thing that my good friend, Senator Glenn, sent out about the 
National Institute on Aging, that they can do studies on aging on the 
space station. Do you know one shuttle flight would fund the National 
Institute on Aging for a full year?
  When you say, What do you get out of the space station that you do 
not get out of just a shuttle flight? The answer is always, Well, it 
takes longer. You can't do this research in 2 weeks. It takes longer. I 
do not know how much longer.
  Then if you ask what kind of research? You hear all of these 
possibilities. Well, we can look at this and we can look at that and we 
can look at this and we can look at that. They give you some 
complicated stuff. NASA has all that stuff cataloged on a computer over 
there. They can give it to you in spades.
  As I say, we have been at it 35 years. We have not gotten anything 
yet except a space suit. Space suits are marvelous contraptions, but 
there is not much demand for space suits in this country. There is a 
lot of demand for education. There is a lot of demand to feed the poor. 
There is a lot of demand for cleaning up our rivers and lakes. There is 
a lot of demand for stopping gangs in high schools. There is a lot of 
demand for bringing crime under control and doing something about 
drugs. No demand for space suits.
  So Mr. President, if I were to ask each Member of this body, if you 
had a chance to go back over the last 15 years and spend the $4 
trillion that we spent that we did not have--the deficit has gone up $4 
trillion since 1981--if I were to ask you, would you have spent the $4 
trillion over the last 15 years the same way we spent it? Why, of 
course you would not have. If you had a chance right now, if somebody 
came to you and said, Look, here's a chance to save $74 billion on this 
space station. Do you think you could solve some of this country's 
problems? Why, it would be like a child at Christmas; people saying, 
Oh, my gosh, we could educate every child in the country for what 
that's going to cost. We could pave every road in the country for what 
that's going to cost. We could go through all those things.
  Every problem we have in this country can be traced not to a lack of

[[Page S9803]]

money, but to the way we spent it. It would not have been for a space 
suit, even though I am a strong proponent of the space program. I got 
teary-eyed with the rest of America when I watched John Glenn soar into 
space. I have gotten teary-eyed a lot of times, but not as teary-eyed 
as I am going to get after we have spent the rest of this $74 billion 
on the space station.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. HOLLINGS addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Carolina [Mr. Hollings] 
is recognized.
  Mr. HOLLINGS. I thank the distinguished Presiding Officer.
  Mr. President, just a brief statement. Someone, sometime, somehow 
should get out here and support the wonderful leadership of our 
distinguished colleague from Arkansas on this particular score. I have 
been relatively quiet on the space station because I have learned after 
30 years how to stay quiet up here.
  With respect to any kind of space program, necessarily having been 
the chairman and now the ranking member of the Commerce, Science, and 
Transportation Committee, I am very much an enthusiast of the space 
program. So my brief comment is to save that space program. I have 
watched it over the past several years.

  I can remember back in 1993 that we had President Clinton coming in 
and having to ask that the space station be redesigned. Why, Mr. 
President? Because in 1984 when we started this program it was sold to 
the American public as an $8 billion program. Then in 1987 it went to 
$16 billion. By 1993, when President Clinton took office, it was some 
$30 billion. So the distinguished President said, ``Well, go back to 
the drawing boards. I don't want to come in here as the new Chief 
Executive and cancel an important program for space, so let's see what 
we can do to redesign it.'' And the cost went down on that redesigning 
to some $19.4 billion. That was in early 1993.
  By the end of the year, those working on the program realized that 
even that was not realistic. So the President and Vice President 
announced a joint program with the Russians of $17.4 billion. That was 
only for the station itself. We found out, after we went down and asked 
GAO to look at the costs and everything else, that with launch and 
operational costs through the year 2012 the total cost of the space 
station is $93.9 billion.
  So I am sitting there and I am trying to be a good friend, which I 
am, of the space program. I think it has been a wonderful American 
success. There is nothing that has thrilled me more than seeing the 
distinguished Senator seated here in front of me, the Senator from 
Ohio, who is a true American hero--we all thrilled at his courage and 
his valor and his common sense. I am sorry we differ on this particular 
score. But I am forced to talk money.
  When I talk money, Mr. President, I get to that space program. I 
found out, when I listened at the hearings, that the science, 
aeronautics, and technology account of NASA, everything except the 
human space flight and the civil service salaries and related mission 
support--all the rest of it, other than the human space flight and 
civil service salaries--was some $5.9 billion this past year and by the 
year 2000 is estimated to be or cut back by NASA to $5.2 billion, which 
does not take care of inflation, which does not take care of cost-of-
living adjustments and everything else.
  So I am in a catch-22 situation. I want the space station like 
everyone else, but I am looking at the formative basic fundamental 
space program, including these unmanned programs as well as the rest of 
the human space flight account, and I am saying that investment in 
human valor and technique and courage, namely, the astronauts 
themselves, what we have going on in Houston and at Cape Kennedy is 
just too valuable to risk cutting to save this massive hardware 
project. We should not be cutting back and paring and scraping and 
everything else in NASA, like that little debate we are having and have 
just voted with respect to the Bion Program. I agree with that 
scientific program. The Post picked up the word ``monkey'' and said you 
can run a touchdown on this one, saying let us get rid of this program. 
We already had humans up there and now you want to finance $15 million 
worth of monkeys. That is good at election time, but it is outrageous 
nonsense.

  Our problem here in the U.S. Senate is that we choke on the gnat and 
swallow the camel. All those debating and wanting to do away with the 
$15 million should be voting for the $15 million, and all those looking 
at space and its program, generally speaking, ought to be withholding 
votes for the space station. There are priorities, there are times we 
have to make choices, and we still, Mr. President, are not out of the 
woods in a budget sense.
  The distinguished Senator from Illinois, Senator Simon, has been a 
leader in trying to get us on a pay-as-you-go basis. He knows exactly 
of which I speak. I can give you exact figures where we still are 
increasing that deficit and debt. I say that too quickly, where we are 
still increasing that deficit. When we increase the deficit, we 
increase the debt, which increases interest costs on the debt, which 
increases taxes, because you can't avoid interest costs. They say there 
are two things you can't avoid, death and taxes. Well, put interest 
costs in the column with taxes. They can't be avoided. They must be 
paid.
  All of that crowd running around on the floor of the U.S. Congress 
saying, ``I am against taxes, I am against taxes, I am against taxes'' 
are raising the debt $1 billion a day, and $353 billion is the 
estimate. If growth continues and inflation starts in, it will be more.
  I was around, Mr. President, as chairman of the Budget Committee when 
we were at less than $1 trillion in debt. Then comes what gobbled us 
all up, namely that supply-side nonsense, which my distinguished friend 
from Kansas, Senator Dole ridiculed. He had a favorite story. I can 
hear it on the floor of the Senate. ``Mr. President, there is good news 
and bad news.'' You would say, ``Senator, what is the good news?'' He 
said, ``A bus load of supply-siders just went over the cliff.'' You 
said, ``What is the bad news.'' He said, ``There was one empty seat.'' 
Now, my poor friend Bob Dole has taken the empty seat, and we are doing 
it seriously here.
  Haven't we learned anything going from less than $1 trillion under 
Ronald Reagan, who was going to balance the budget in 1 year, to $5 
trillion under the Reagan-Bush administrations? And they are talking 
about who is really for balanced budgets. Well, to balance the budget, 
we have to do all of the above, as they say in the classroom, on that 
local option quiz, not just true or false. It is all of the above. Yes, 
you are going to have to freeze spending, cut spending, and yes, you 
are going to have to increase taxes to get on top of this monster.
  We in the Budget Committee, with eight votes, two of our 
distinguished Republican colleagues, and six of us on the Democratic 
side, 10 years ago almost voted for a value-added tax dedicated to 
eliminating the deficit and the debt. The reason we did it is because 
we realized that freezes were insufficient. The spending cuts under the 
best of the best spending cutters, Ronald Wilson Reagan, were not 
enough. Gramm-Rudman-Hollings was not enough, automatic cuts across the 
board. So we needed taxes. We voted it at that time. Now, all 
discipline and reality is gone.
  You have to withhold new programs. That was my vote against 
voluntarism--against AmeriCorps. Maybe I am the only Democratic Senator 
who voted against it. I helped start the Peace Corps. I can give you 
chapter and verse, where we had the conference down in Miami, and we 
called first the then-candidate, John Kennedy. We could not get him and 
we got Myer Fellman, his legislative assistant on the line. I proposed 
a program to Jim Gavin at the conference, head of Arthur D. Little, and 
quoting William Paley, called it the Freedom Corps. That is how we 
started it. The first broach of the subject was in Cadillac Square in 
Detroit, and we fleshed it out during the week to be presented in San 
Francisco.

  So I believe in voluntarism, which the Peace Corps is. But I had to 
withhold on this new program because in order to get it we played the 
peanut in the shell trick. We took away 347,000 student loans--the 
money, therefore--in order to finance 25,000 volunteers, who get paid 
at the cost of $25,000 apiece. I wish I could have gotten out

[[Page S9804]]

of high school hoping to go to college and jumped into a $25,000 
program. But that is what we are doing here, trying to identify with 
pollster politics. We have a real problem on our hands. We are not 
talking here on the floor of the U.S. Senate about saving the space 
program, and we should be.
  When I see my distinguished colleague who has really gotten into the 
subject in tremendous detail, the Senator from Arkansas--and nobody 
here to support him--I feel I must speak by way of conscience, having 
listened, because we got these hearings before our committee on all the 
facets of the particular program. When you get the environmental 
satellites, the aeronautics programs, all those things that will be 
just practically decimated, and in order to go for a space station, 
then it is just bad planning--particularly at a time when the United 
States of America is in a position of having to stop the hemorrhage of 
tax increases, $1 billion a day. Tell the American public out there. 
The media are not doing their job. They have no idea. The candidates 
can run and get elected, saying, ``I am for cutting spending, I am for 
cutting spending, I am for cutting spending.''
  Then they come up here with that silly nonsense of wanting to abolish 
the Department of Commerce. Who do you think I am on the telephone with 
now? The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. I am trying 
to find out whether that hurricane now bearing down on South Carolina 
is going to hit my house again like Hugo did down in Charleston. What 
are we going to do with the patent office? We can go down the list of 
the various endeavors at that department. Our export endeavor was 
ridiculed. They ridiculed Secretary Brown, who was doing what every 
Governor worth his salt did. He got offices in London, in Tokyo, 
talking to industry, and that is what the Secretary should be doing.
  That is the effort they want to get rid of, the Department of 
Commerce, and departments for energy, education, and housing, and then 
they come around here and put $93.9 billion in a program that is going 
to really hurt the basic space program, where we are going to have to 
really cut back on the valued astronauts, the human side, to pay for 
this hardware. We are just going to make it truly unattractive for 
them. Their sacrifice is great enough. They practically have to 
separate themselves from their families and everything else. Their 
diligence, and time and time again, their discipline and everything 
else is the hardest work in the world. There is not enough pay. But 
then they say, like we have at NIH--if you cut the research, the smart 
graduates see that of all the particular research grants that were 
presented this year, we were able to actually fund less than 20 percent 
of those who passed muster competitively. We are not funding. So the 
smart researchers, scientists, and graduates say, well, there is no 
future there. I don't want to work my way into trying to get a space 
station, saying, ``Wait a minute. There is no future there.''

  So I have voted to support the basic space program. I have never 
taken the floor because I did not want to, as chairman of that 
particular program, indicate opposition to space. I worked with the 
distinguished Senator from Ohio when President Reagan was in office to 
save the space program. I will work again to save the space program. 
Mr. President, that is why I am here this afternoon to save the space 
program. In this budget climate, we cannot keep both the basic space 
program and the space station.
  I yield the floor.

                          ____________________