[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 41 (Wednesday, April 9, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H1370-H1371]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             SUPPORT FOR OUR NATION'S SPACE STATION EFFORT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Florida [Mr. Weldon] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak out in support of 
our Nation's space station effort. As most Americans are aware, we have 
been bending metal here in the United States and we are getting very 
close to putting aloft the first critical elements for the initial 
assembly of our space station; and as well, our international partners 
such as the Europeans, the Canadians, and the Japanese have invested 
billions of dollars in constructing their elements, and scientists all 
over the world, as well as school children all over the world, are 
looking forward to the first phases of this program.
  Unfortunately, however, in the space station redesign conducted by 
the administration in 1993, the Russian government was placed in the 
critical pathway, what we call the critical pathway for space station 
construction and assembly. They were put responsible with Russian tax 
dollars for the construction of the service module, an element that has 
contained in it the life support, attitude control and propulsion 
capabilities.
  Unfortunately, the Russians have not been paying for their part of 
the space station. They have demonstrated to the international 
community that they are an unreliable partner. Indeed, they have told 
us five times over the past year-and-a-half, I believe now six times 
over the past year-and-a-half that they will be putting the money into 
this program and they have failed to do so. As we all know here in this 
body, the Russians have very, very serious internal financial problems 
that have been created by their transition to a market economy, and 
they just do not have the rubles to pay their people to build their 
components to the space station.
  Now, the reason I rise today is to call on the administration, and in 
particular, I call on the Vice President, Al Gore, to rise to the 
occasion and demonstrate to the American people that he has the kind of 
leadership ability that we expect to see in a national leader like him, 
and to step up to the plate and explain to us how he is going to 
redefine the Russian involvement in this program.
  I do not believe this situation calls for another redesign of the 
space station. We have a good design as it is, and we need to stay on 
schedule and we need to make sure that this program is a success. But 
clearly, the Russians are not going to be able to be a full participant 
in the way that was originally defined. The time is ripe, the time is 
now, for the administration to come forward and, specifically for the 
Vice President, who has been tasked by the President to lead our 
Nation's space policy, it is time for the Vice President to step 
forward and explain to us how we are going to keep this program on 
track and to make it a success.
  Now, let me just make very clear that I would like to see the 
Russians somehow involved, but they have to be removed from the 
critical pathway. We cannot have this program dependent on them 
anymore. We need to do what we can to keep them involved. They have a 
lot to bring to the table in their knowledge of space flight and their 
engineering, but we do not want them to be in the critical flow where 
our space station, the international space station is dependent upon 
them, because they clearly do not have the money to do that.
  Now, there has been a proposal brought forward to take funds out of 
the space shuttle program and divert it into efforts to try to come up 
with a new interim control module that will serve as a fail-safe effort 
to make sure that this program is a success. I have very, very serious 
reservations about taking more money out of our space shuttle program. 
The space shuttle program has been cut drastically over the years. The 
space shuttle program has laid off hundreds, thousands of people in my 
congressional district, and that includes Kennedy Space Center,

[[Page H1371]]

the home to our Nation's space shuttle, and I think it would be unwise 
for us to cut additional dollars out of the space shuttle program at 
this time.
  I believe that there are other areas within the NASA budget, such as 
the Mission of Planet Earth Program that I believe last year had over 
$1 billion of unexpended resources, and the year before that, $600 
million of unexpended resources, a program that does not have critical 
safety issues associated with it.
  Specifically, we are not talking about human space flight here, we 
are talking about unmanned vehicles, unmanned satellites, studying the 
environment. A worthwhile program; nonetheless, a program that has 
clearly shown that it has extra money in it and a place where we could 
get the funds that we need to keep this program a success.
  So again, I call on the Vice President to rise to the occasion and do 
the right thing and preserve our Nation's space station program.

                          ____________________