Tom Harkin: “Again, with all due respect, when a crisis happens, Congress responds. Again, just from a budgeting standpoint, from…”

“Again, with all due respect, when a crisis happens, Congress responds. Again, just from a budgeting standpoint, from being perhaps a little tightfisted with taxpayer dollars, and not giving sort of a blank check and saying, ``Fill it in,'' I think by having a cap on these costs, a national cost that I propose equivalent to what we do in our common costs, that it precludes a kind of runaway giveaway. It is like, OK, Hungary wants to upgrade their capabilities in a certain area, so we say, ``Oh, wonderful. You need not the $1.98 version, you need the $100 version.'' But Congress says, ``We can't afford the $100 version.'' We say, ``Not to worry. We'll give it to you. That will be one of our grants. We will subsidize it, and you will get ours.'' ... To answer the question as forthrightly as I can, yes, I am saying that if one of these three countries want the $1.98 version, we could give up a 25-percent subsidy for that. We would not come in with a $100 version and say taxpayers are going to pay for the whole thing. Yes, that is exactly what I mean.”