Barbara Mikulski

As chairwoman, I have three priorities for NASA: make sure we have a balanced space program that will make NASA move forward with the programs that the Congress has authorized and funded.

So I hope, Mr. Administrator, that you and the NASA personnel who have done such a great job for our country through all of these years of space exploration will go back to the drawing board and support Commercial Crew in a fiscally…

We must keep making progress on the Academies' recommendations, now and in the future.

We want NASA to be an economic engine, out-innovating, out-educating, and out-building what we need to do to keep America pre-eminent in space.

We, too, want to do business in the subcommittee at the speed of business.

We face the same issues, whether it's our rockfish population or crabs. We do need accurate assessments.

Thinking that it's a bad idea doesn't give a plan for a contingency.

If we provided the authorized level for this year for Commercial Crew and add the funds from last year that have yet to be spent, NASA would have more than $900 million available for Commercial Crew selections.

How is NASA ensuring our tax dollars are spent wisely?

Additionally, if we don't avoid a sequester, NASA will be cut by another 8 percent across the board.

We are concerned that the satellite costs are starting to erode other activities at NOAA.

We'll see what the authorizers do. It's a complicated topic.

I think as you've heard from the members here, we're each interested in where NASA, through our appropriations process and authorizing, is making a significant investment in some really big projects with really big bucks behind it, for…

We don't want a sequester either. Now, we might disagree on a line item or an agency here or there, but we know a sequester is not in the interest of the country over the long haul.

The coast is part of our heritage, part of our identity, but it's also a big part of our economy.

We really do want to let the people who work at Commerce know... to create jobs, and sustain jobs, and keep our country safe.

This is the last public hearing of Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison.

We need you, at the Secretary's level, to really use whoever you will designate to be a hands-on manager of these costs.

You know, NOAA headquarters is in the State of Maryland, and some of its most significant assets are there.

This subcommittee is obsessed with the safety of people we ask to go into harms way, and whether it's our astronauts in space or our pilots into a hurricane.

The cost to refurbish each plane is $20 million, because, essentially, it's not like new carburetors, or, you know, let's clean up the leather seats here.

Well, I think what the subcommittee would like is a detailed management plan including not only the hiring, but how are you going to train them, how are you going to recruit them, what happened to the fast-track idea?

The Commerce Department's job is to work with the President, the Congress, and the private sector to really create jobs.

But, we've heard that before. How is this going to be different than in the past?

Everybody likes to talk today about American exceptionalism. It really is our intellectual ideas.