[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 10]
[House]
[Page 14586]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



 THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION PROGRAM DESERVES OUR CONTINUED SUPPORT

  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 wanted to come here this evening and talk 
to my colleagues for a few minutes about the VA-HUD bill that is going 
to come up tomorrow and talk specifically about potential amendments 
that are going to be made.
  It is important for us to lend our support to the overall NASA budget 
and, specifically, manned space exploration and those items that center 
around the International Space Station.
  There has been an awful lot of talk in the last several weeks about 
potential cuts in the International Space Station because of the 
overruns that had been talked about for a long period of time. We are 
looking at building a facility that has never been built before and 
doing things that are absolutely new technology. The guesses in the 
expenditures of what it was going to take to create this facility have 
not always been right; and, unfortunately, we are facing more costs 
than what we originally anticipated.
  Something has to be done about that. We hope we will find a way in 
our committees to ask the tough questions of the contractors and of 
NASA to make sure that we get a better handle on what is going to be 
spent in the future with regard to any space activity, whether it is 
manned or robotic.
  But, right now, we are making some real serious decisions and 
potentially bad decisions with regard to the International Space 
Station. We are talking about taking parts of the International Space 
Station, such as the crew return vehicle, which allows a full crew of 
seven people to do the science necessary to get a return from our 
exploration in space.
  If we stop the construction of the crew return vehicle, then we will 
only be able to accommodate three to six people on the International 
Space Station. If we did six, a total of two Soyuz return vehicles, one 
commander for each vehicle, that would dramatically reduce our ability 
to do the science that we have built the International Space Station 
for in the first place.
  A lot has been done, and we have succeeded in getting significant 
amounts of monies put into the appropriations bill, which will be 
considered tomorrow in the VA-HUD and Independent Agencies 
appropriation bill.
  Some of those amendments will be Space Station-killing amendments, so 
I am here to ask my colleagues to give very serious consideration to 
anything that would stop this huge investment that we have made and the 
opportunity for us to get a significant return on that investment over 
the next many years, an investment in knowledge of what is out beyond 
Earth's surface; what we might be able to gain in knowledge as we 
explore space that could change our health, our lives, knowledge-wise 
as far as why human beings are here; or perhaps something as simple as 
a solution to or a cure for a particular illness.
  Those are the things we have gotten out of our space exploration for 
decades, and it is interesting to note some statistics: that in the 
1960s, during the Apollo period, in the 1960s and 1970s, 4 percent of 
our Nation's budget went to NASA, 4 percent. Today, that amount is less 
than six-tenths of 1 percent.
  It is also interesting that some of these amendments that may be 
considered tomorrow that will replace money from NASA, take money away 
from NASA and put it either into the VA or HUD parts of that bill, let 
us consider what has happened to Housing and Urban Development, as an 
example. They have had an increase from $16 billion to $31 billion in 
the last several years. The Veterans Administration has had increases 
from $40 billion to $50 billion, a 25 percent increase only in the last 
4 or 5 years.
  We want to support both of those. I will be supporting them. Both 
have had significant increases in this year's appropriation. The NASA 
budget has stayed flat, at $14 billion, for the last many years. It is 
time for our commitment to space to be reiterated, to be spoken of 
again in a way that we spoke of it in the 1960s.
  I remember when President Kennedy challenged our country to send a 
man to the moon and return him safely within a decade, and we did it. 
It changed the way we educated our children, it changed the way we did 
business. It brought huge returns to us.
  So, in wrapping this up, I ask my colleagues to pay very much 
attention to the VA-HUD appropriation tomorrow and to support NASA in 
every way they can.

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