[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 4]
[Senate]
[Pages 4369-4370]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              NASA FUNDING

  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, my compliments to the majority 
leader on the way in which he offered leadership for the Senate on a 
rather rigorous and very lengthy discussion of the budget over the last 
several days. My thanks to him for the hospitality he provided in the 
course of a very long evening. And my compliments and congratulations 
to the chairman of the Budget Committee, Senator Nickles, and to 
Senator Conrad, the ranking member, for the extraordinarily bipartisan 
fashion, as the hours of the evening wore on and as nerves began to 
fray, of keeping a calm and cool deliberation in the midst of 300 
amendments that had been filed. Those 300 amendments would have kept us 
here all day today, all day Saturday, all day Sunday, and well into 
Monday. Yet with that leadership, the chairman and the ranking member 
were able to get reasonable minds to come together and find consensus 
and therefore withdraw many amendments. That was a testimony and showed 
the Senate working its will.
  I asked for this time because I want to comment on one part of the 
budget that was passed last night. In the wee hours of the morning, an 
amendment was passed by unanimous consent, sponsored by Senator 
Sessions, Senator Shelby, this Senator from Florida, and Senator Graham 
of Florida. It was an amendment to bring the level of funding for NASA 
provided in the budget resolution up to the level requested by the 
President. This was no small amount of money, for what had come out of 
the Budget Committee, over my objection, was a cut to America's space 
program, as evidenced in the NASA budget, of $631 million.
  My pleas in the course of our deliberations in the Budget Committee 
to get the White House to step forward and to support its request for 
its full funding at a level of $16.2 billion, went unheeded. Indeed, 
those pleas went unheeded for the White House to support its own budget 
on NASA all the way up through the end of the deliberations this entire 
week until around 1 o'clock this morning.
  It was only when Senator Sessions and Senator Shelby each put their 
foot down to let the chairman of the Budget Committee know that their 
votes on final passage were questionable unless that was brought up to 
the level of the President's request did we successfully get inserted 
into the budget an amendment that would bring NASA up to the $16.2 
billion.
  Where was the White House and why did it take--and I give great 
credit to Senator Shelby--that long, with my encouragement and that of 
others, to get the budget resolution amended so when this budget 
resolution is ultimately passed after conference with the House of 
Representatives there will not be such a financial straitjacket on NASA 
so the appropriations committees could not give the adequate funding to 
NASA? Yet that is what we were faced with at 1 o'clock this morning.
  Where is the White House? That is the subject of my commentary. There 
is no greater supporter in the Senate for America's space program than 
this Senator from Florida, who has had the great privilege of being a 
part of the space program. There is no greater need than the need at 
this particular time for the full funding of the President's request, 
with all that NASA has on its plate. It has, not only the new 
initiative announced by the President back in January of going back to 
the Moon and then eventually to Mars--of course, no funding really 
being provided for that, the major funding being

[[Page 4370]]

provided in the President's announcement in the outyears--but all the 
other things on NASA's plate.
  We had a major space disaster, the second one that occurred within 
the span of 17 years. Now, as a result of an excellent report brought 
forth by Admiral Geman's commission, we understand what specific things 
need to be done to fix the problem and to get back into flight. Of 
course, it is going to cost a lot of money to make those fixes, and 
indeed the downtime is costing NASA all kinds of turmoil and 
uncertainty.
  For us not to have the White House step forward and say with vigor 
that they support their budget request for NASA caused us to just 
narrowly, by the skin of our teeth, avert a disaster of almost passing 
a budget resolution last night that was $631 million under the 
President's request. There is too much riding on our exploring the 
heavens for this extremely prestigious and very productive program of 
the United States called America's space program. As we explore the 
heavens, we continue to push out the frontiers of our knowledge, and as 
we develop the technology to do that, that then translates into 
magnificent enhancement in the quality of our lives as the technology 
from the space program is applied to our normal, everyday lives.
  I call on the White House. I call on the leadership of NASA. We 
cannot take for granted just because the President has announced a 
major new initiative that it is going to get funded. Indeed, we are 
swimming upstream. The immediate reaction of the American people to the 
President's initiative was they didn't support it. There is only one 
person who can lead the space program. That is the President or the 
Vice President. A Senator can't lead it. The administrator of NASA 
can't lead it, particularly on bold new initiatives. It has to be the 
White House that leads it.
  I implore the White House and NASA to step forward and support your 
report. Otherwise, we are going to get into a situation where mistakes 
of omission are going to occur like almost occurred last night. 
Suddenly we are going to find ourselves with a final budget product 
that is going to straitjacket NASA with less funds than the President 
requested.
  Now more than ever NASA needs those funds to return to flight as 
safely as possible. I say that because space flight is risky. But it is 
a risk worth taking because of the expansion of our knowledge and the 
fulfilling of our desire in our inner souls to be explorers and 
adventurers, a characteristic of the American people.
  I felt compelled to share these thoughts as one of the biggest 
boosters of the U.S. space program--indeed, the world's space program. 
For we are in an international venture with other nations of this world 
on the international space station, sharing various citizens of the 
world on different avenues, namely, American rockets through the space 
shuttle and European and Russian rockets on other space ventures.
  It is important the White House back their request vigorously. I hope 
and I expect they will do so, and then we will continue to have an 
excellent space program.
  Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.

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