Jerry Brown: “I just want to offer a few comments on the bill from the perspective of the authorizing committee on which I serve, the…”

“I just want to offer a few comments on the bill from the perspective of the authorizing committee on which I serve, the Committee on Science. This bill, of course, appropriates about $20 billion or more for programs within the purview of that committee. I am happy to say that I am rising here to praise and not to condemn the work of the chairman and the ranking member, although there are some difficult choices that had to be made in this bill. Benjamin Franklin once observed that necessity never made a good bargain, and yet it is necessity that drives the painful choices that go into this most challenging appropriation bill. Evaluating this bill is always difficult for me. I believe deeply that this Nation has failed to do an adequate job of investing in our future by letting funding levels for civilian science programs decline over the last decade. Yet, this bill forces us to make painful trade-offs among disparate deserving domestic programs. In this one bill, we have to fund housing, support our veterans, provide for emergency disaster relief and invest in our future at NASA, the National Science Foundation and EPA.”