[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 130 (Thursday, September 30, 1999)]
[House]
[Page H9178]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    TECHNOLOGY AND AMERICA'S FUTURE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Lampson) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. LAMPSON. Mr. Speaker, I am here this afternoon to say a few words 
about why research and technology is important to America. For me, it 
is a simple story. Technology gives people the tools to live better 
lives, beginning with the discovery of fire on a winter night somewhere 
back in history. Technology creates jobs, raises standards of living, 
and allows people to live longer and fuller lives.
  My home, in the Ninth District of Texas, has really three prime 
examples of the power of new technologies to spur growth and create 
opportunities: petroleum, space, and medicine.
  In my hometown of Beaumont, in 1901, an era began when oil drillers 
hit the Lucas Gusher in Spindletop. By the end of that year, 
Spindletop's production exceeded all the rest of the world combined. 
The technologies that unfolded in the following decade in the use of 
automobiles, aircraft, petroleum refining totally changed the shape of 
our world, making mobility a commonplace rather than a luxury for the 
wealthy, allowing average Americans to enjoy the personal freedom to 
travel, to work, to shop, just to have fun, for pleasure.
  Almost a hundred years later, technology continues to find new uses 
for our hydrocarbon resources and to make transportation more safe and 
more compatible with the environment. Beaumont and East Texas still 
have a major share of America's petroleum refining and petrochemical 
manufacturing capacity. And what keeps the industry a vigorous source 
of employment everyone recognizes is research and technological 
innovation.
  Energy, oil, and chemicals are increasingly international industries. 
They have to compete successfully with industries worldwide in the 
field of efficiency and innovation, and they need to find new ways to 
minimize their impact on the environment. The road to those goals is 
paved by research.
  A few miles southwest of Spindletop is the Johnson Space Center, one 
of the major centers of America's space program. As the Lucas Gusher 
celebrated the beginning of the 20th century, the International Space 
Station, managed by the Johnson Space Center, will mark the beginning 
of the 21st century. This is the largest space project in the history 
and a collaboration between the United States, Canada, the member 
states of the European Space Agency, Japan, Russia, and Brazil to build 
a laboratory in permanent orbit around the Earth.
  Where will this step lead us? Space station research and medicine and 
biomedical technologies will help open the door to new advances in 
health care, research, and physical sciences and engineering; will 
enable development of a new generation of materials for optical 
computing, technologies for increased efficiencies engines, and a host 
of other advances that we cannot even predict.
  The Space Station will be advancing knowledge in the basic sciences 
across the spectrum and providing opportunity for commercial research 
and development opportunity as well. And on the Space Station we will 
also be developing a whole spectrum of space technologies that will 
enable a tremendous expansion of our capabilities for commerce and 
exploration.
  The course of human space exploration is not set today, but I believe 
that humans will over the course of the next century make the trip to 
Mars if not a routine, then at least a regular, event. America should 
lead that chapter in the history of humanity.
  One of the things that we can predict about the 21st century is that 
our citizens will increasingly find themselves in competition with 
labor from around the world. This competition does not have to be a 
zero-sum game where they can get richer by making any neighbor poorer. 
The 21st century can be a win-win game if advances in research and 
technology give our workers the knowledge and the tools needed to 
continue to lead the growth of prosperity in the global economy.
  It is obvious to me that research is not a luxury. It is a necessity. 
We have to make the investments necessary to make sure that the 
economic opportunity made possible by technology-led growth are 
available to our children's generation and to make sure that we can 
maintain our standard of living and to improve our stewardship of the 
environment, to make sure that our longer lives are healthier, richer, 
and less expensive medically, to manage the continued growth of the 
world's population, and to open the universe to the continuing epic of 
human discovery.
  Finally, Mr. Speaker, I ask that as we proceed through the next few 
weeks to negotiate our final appropriations decisions for fiscal 2000 
that we remember the importance of research and the importance of 
agencies like NASA, the National Science Foundation, and the National 
Institutes of Health to our country's future.

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