Richard Shelby

I hope you and Senator Brown can expedite these nominees as soon as possible.

The Administration needs these people. I call this a sterling group.

I am also proud of all of the nominees for accepting the responsibility of Federal service.

I believe we have a distinguished group here from Mr. Compton to Mr. Campbell.

I do not believe that expansions die of old age.

What significance is the continuing lower price of oil and gas in our economy?

Overall, very positive in the country?

This economy has been in an expansionist mood for quite some time.

But NASA for years has been on the cutting edge and has to maintain a cutting edge of science, and we all benefit from that.

Certainty is important.

The biggest threat to me is uncertainty.

I think we're going to keep bipartisan support. I'm going to give all I can, I believe the Senator from New Hampshire will, too, just like Senator Mikulski and I did work together.

We don't need to cut this budget, we need to increase it because so many [off microphone] we can all benefit [off microphone].

Is NASA experiencing any pressure from the commercial crew providers to loosen contract requirements to enable flying to the Space Station sooner?

What assurance can you give this subcommittee that there will be no more cost increases or delays? Can you do that?

The original commercial crew program contract stipulated certification for crew launches by 2017, but the reality is that the anticipated certification will now be in 2019, a slip.

The 2017 omnibus appropriations bill provided no less than $75 million for habitation research activities to support human exploration beyond low Earth orbit.

The Department of Defense is complying with congressional direction to transition national security launch activity from vehicles that use Russian-made rocket engines to those which use a domestically produced engine by the end of 2022.

I believe in the aerospace business, uncertainty equals more cost, at least we have found this on this subcommittee.

For human exploration, the current administration picks up where the previous administration left off, by projecting a lofty vision for space while providing a budget that keeps the vision from leaving Earth.

This budget request attempts to navigate a challenging fiscal environment, but would disrupt ongoing missions and delay future exploration for years to come.

The administration has proposed a fiscal year 2018 budget of $19.1 billion for NASA, which is a reduction of 2.9 percent from the current year level.

Meeting these target levels is incredibly important, and Congress has met these targets now 3 years in a row.

I am not above the law and you are not above the law. Nobody should be, and that is what we preach, and that is what we believe.

Because you have to follow the law like we all do, right?