Dale Bumpers: “Last week, the Armed Services Committee accepted an amendment that capped the costs on the F-22 fighter plane. They, I…”

“Last week, the Armed Services Committee accepted an amendment that capped the costs on the F-22 fighter plane. They, I think, correctly decided that the costs of the F-22 could very well go way beyond anything intended by the Congress. So, Mr. President, they accepted a cap on the F-22 fighter plane. All I am trying to do on this is do the same thing on the space station. I am using NASA's figures. These are not my figures. These are the figures that NASA says they can build the space station for and operate it. The amendment, as I say, is right where they say it is, but here is the reason I am doing this. The General Accounting Office says that since last year, the risk to the space station's costs in schedule have, in fact, increased. GAO goes on to say the station's financial reserves have also deteriorated significantly. Now, I think the people in this body who strongly favor the space station in good conscience and as a duty to their constituents and their own conscience ought to support saying at some point there ought to be some kind of a limit on how much we are willing to spend. I am using the figures that NASA has themselves put out: $17.4 billion to build it, $1.3 billion a year to operate it. The cap does not extend to a launch cost, only to the building and deployment and to the operating of it.”