Jerry Brown: “I hate to tell my colleague from Massachusetts, Mr. Kennedy, this, but the path he is pursuing is not going to achieve…”

“I hate to tell my colleague from Massachusetts, Mr. Kennedy, this, but the path he is pursuing is not going to achieve his ends. If he were to succeed, then the space station fails, our partnership agreements with the rest of the world, that includes the Japanese, the Europeans, and the Russians, would all collapse. They would begin their own independent programs to achieve what we have been trying to achieve as partners with them in space. They would never again trust us as a reliable partner on any major activity. We could begin to see the decline of the United States as a world power, and we would not achieve the goal of providing for the homeless that we want because that depends upon our economic leadership in the world, our ability to compete, and we would have lost it. Now, I am concerned about more than just the space program. I see the next 5 years for all of federally supported R&D going down in real terms by 25 percent, and I think the entire industrial base of this country is likely to suffer as a result of that.”