Political Quotes

“Madam Chair, this amendment would return National Science Foundation funding to its pre-stimulus level, and it would save the taxpayers about $1.2 billion. Just before voting against the stimulus bill a while ago, I stood in this same Chamber and stated what I thought was pretty obvious at that time: that the only thing that this stimulus bill would stimulate is more spending later, and I think we have found that to be the case. {time} 2050 Leave it to the NSF, an agency that doles out billions of dollars testing theories, to prove me right on this. In the 4 years leading up to the stimulus bill, funding for the NSF averaged more than $5.7 billion. That's not exactly a drop in the bucket, even by Washington standards. By comparison, in the 4 years since the stimulus bill passed, NSF average spending has climbed 31 percent to a staggering $7.6 billion. For whatever reason, rather than draw down from this inflated level, Congress appears content to maintain it. The bill before us today funds the NSF at $7.3 billion for fiscal year 2013. That's $300 million more than last year. While I acknowledge that the NSF does some noble work, it also has drawn its fair share of criticism. Notably, there was a recent investigation by our colleague in the Senate, Senator Tom Coburn. He identified $3 billion in mismanagement by the agency. The report uncovered a lot of highly questionable research projects that would be laughable if the taxpayers weren't paying the tab.…”