Bill Nelson

To truly honor our servicemembers, we all agree that the U.S. Government must take care of our veterans, their widows and orphans. In keeping with that moral principle, we must repeal the unjust offset that denies widows and orphans the…

It is always good to have you back on the Hill among your friends, and we appreciate your good work.

I want to be a partner should there be a role for Congress to play to help the bureau execute a plan to repair this dam as quickly as possible.

We said that is not good enough, and provided a $27.5 million increase above the President's extremely modest request of $15 million in 2010.

In 2009, we increased this funding by another $5 million.

In 2008, Senator Mikulski and I included the first ever funding of $17 million for Adam Walsh enforcement in a war supplemental funding bill.

Ending Constellation will devastate an industrial base critical to our national security.

The President's alternative plan will actually cost us more money and delay our ability to get ourselves into space.

Despite what I believe is the compelling logic suggesting we reconsider the decision to terminate the space shuttle at the end of the current manifest, the administration has chosen to hide behind the Bush administration mistaken plan.

The question should be: How can we afford not to fully support them and ensure that they remain indisputable factors in driving our Nation's technical, industrial and scientific excellence?

How can anyone believe it makes sense to follow this plan for purely budgetary reasons--when we have just spent close to a trillion dollars on short-term relief?

The Bush administration failed to request a single dime of funding to reimburse NASA for the cost of re-certifying the shuttle program for its return to flight after Columbia.

That is why I am so concerned about the Obama administration's response to the Augustine panel report.

I believe that has been reflected in the findings of the 'Gathering Storm' report, prepared several years ago under the leadership of Norm Augustine.

If we follow the administration's plan 'we will have lost the many years required to recreate the equivalent of what will be discarded.'

To abandon Ares I as a baseline vehicle for an alternative without demonstrated capability nor proven superiority, or even equivalence, is unwise and probably not cost-effective.

If Project Constellation is cancelled, our Nation will not, in the near-future, be able to travel beyond low-Earth orbit.

My No. 1 priority is astronaut safety. We must have a reliable transportation system to protect our astronauts during launch, mission execution, and reentry.

We owe it to the American people. We owe it to the taxpayers. And we owe it to the astronauts to be very clear about what we are going to do and how are we going to do it.

I've made a request to the Chairman and our Commerce Committee Chairman, Senator Rockefeller, that we have a hearing on this to try to bring some focus on the correct data.

It seems at cross-purposes that you cut your research dollars to determine the correct data in order to come up with a Catch Share.

Well, whatever the venue is, we've got to get to the bottom of this.

Thank you for your public service and the good job that you're doing.

Needless to say, our fishermen are quite concerned, and it's not just the commercial fishermen--they have now banded together with the charter boat captains and the recreational fishermen--on the closure of the fisheries, for example, on…

The Magnuson Act worked, on a fishery--particularly up in New England that was being over fished. And it brought back that stock.