David Weldon: “Mr. Chairman, the Cox Commission report in recommendation No. 24 recommended that it is in the national security…”

“Mr. Chairman, the Cox Commission report in recommendation No. 24 recommended that it is in the national security interests of the United States that we expand our domestic launch capacity. My amendment addresses this issue. I would like to point out that we have no other proposal being put forward to address that. The Air Force in its IPT report indicated that with $7.3 million--I say million dollars, not billion dollars-- you can increase the domestic launch capacity of the United States by 20 to 30 percent, a remarkable achievement with such a small amount of money. Indeed, the other body has already funded this priority in their appropriation bill. Now, the Air Force in their unfunded priority list listed this as one of their priorities. I believe it was their fourth priority. I believe it is the responsibility of this body to decide what are the priorities. I believe that we need to ask ourselves what are we going to do to address the issue of all of these launches going overseas and going overseas particularly to China. This amendment is very, very simple. It authorizes the $7.3 million. It additionally calls for a study to be conducted by the Secretary of Defense to look at how we are going to offer our launch ranges to these commercial users in the future years.”