Timothy Roemer: “the other amendment would simply again look at the U.S. taxpayers' interest, and it would cap the overall costs of the…”

“the other amendment would simply again look at the U.S. taxpayers' interest, and it would cap the overall costs of the Space Station. According to a graph put together by CRS back in about 1988, the Space Station took about 4 percent of NASA's budget. So out of an overall spending of $13 billion, $13.2 billion, the Space Station consumed about 4 percent. Today, in the year 2000, that spending level is up to almost 20 percent of the NASA budget. So NASA is starting to cannibalize, cancel, withdraw from, and not do some very important scientific projects within the NASA budget. That might be Shuttle safety programs, guaranteeing the safety of our astronauts. They might be programs to do things faster, cheaper, better. They might be space science programs. They may be missions to Mars where, according to today's paper, scientists are claiming that they have discovered water on Mars. Instead of building a Space Station that limits our dreams, why not go beyond that? So I would encourage my colleagues, if we are going to build this Space Station, do it smartly, do it prudently, do it wisely, and do it with the taxpayers' interests in mind. Do not send $5 billion in the next couple years to Russia, not our hard-earned money, not our families' hard-earned money. These are two steps that the appropriators and the authorizers should take to curtail costs of the Space Station in the future.”