Jerry Brown: “I am going to strongly support the amendment offered by the gentlewoman from California [Ms. Lofgren] and as a matter of…”

“I am going to strongly support the amendment offered by the gentlewoman from California [Ms. Lofgren] and as a matter of fact have included similar provisions in the substitute which I will offer at the appropriate time. It seems to be highly unwise to take an agency, which all of us recognize the value of, it is very high on the priorities of the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Walker] and other Members of the majority. There is no criticism that it is engaged in waste, fraud, or abuse. It has a very lean organization and one which works extremely effectively in moving grants out to the best researchers in this country on the basis of thoroughly peer-reviewed applications for these grants. So I think it smacks of being punitive to arbitrarily cut even a small figure like $7 million, which is only about 6 percent of their budget, for this particular category of activities. It smacks of a certain degree of punitiveness to seek to do this particularly when we have had no hearings on the need for it, we have not asked the agency in for comments on it, we have not asked the research community for their views on it.”