Norman D. Dicks: “I rise in very strong opposition to this amendment. The amendment deletes $60 million from procurement and $502.4…”

“I rise in very strong opposition to this amendment. The amendment deletes $60 million from procurement and $502.4 million from research and development. The sum of this funding is for innovative research and procurement from small businesses and unsolicited proposals. And the gentleman from Florida and myself, and the gentleman from California, we've been here a long time. We have seen time after time when weapon systems like Predator and ScanEagle, I mean, there's all kinds of things that have happened because of small businesses. And when we made a decision to cut out earmarks for for-profit companies, one of the things that our committee did on a bipartisan basis, with unanimity on both sides, was to say let's put some more money into this competitive program, the Small Business Innovation and Research Program, which is at NIH, and at a number of agencies, I think DOE has one. This is a way to bring small businesses into the Defense Department on a competitive basis. And they do things that the Department needs to have done. So I rise with my chairman, Mr. Young, in strong opposition to this amendment. This was done to try to help the small business sector still make the contribution in the future for innovative new defense technologies. It's a good program and one that we should support. I yield back the balance of my time.”