[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 5470-5471]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




             CONSTELLATION FISCAL YEAR 2011 BUDGET PROPOSAL

  (Mr. CAO asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. CAO. Mr. Speaker, I am disappointed that the President's budget 
proposal for fiscal year 2011 recommends canceling NASA's Constellation 
Space Program. In agreement with Neil Armstrong, I am very concerned 
this proposal will leave our Nation with no means of transporting our 
astronauts to and from the International

[[Page 5471]]

Space Station and could set the U.S. space program back decades.
  To this day, we enjoy countless practical benefits from Apollo 
technology in things that affect our everyday lives, such as improved 
weather forecasting, which is vitally important to those of us who live 
in Louisiana and on the gulf coast.
  The Michoud Assembly Facility in my district was slated to build 
components of the Constellation Program. Michoud now faces the prospect 
of losing thousands of high-skilled jobs. This world-class 
manufacturing facility has been used to build the Saturn rockets for 
Apollo and the main fuel tanks for the Space Shuttle, among other 
notable achievements. If the President's proposal is adopted, we will 
lose all that experience and manufacturing know-how, along with 9 
billion tax dollars already spent developing the Constellation Program.

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