Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, we must reluctantly rise in opposition to the amendment from my very good friend from California. I certainly agree with the gentlewoman that the National Science Foundation should conduct basic research that will enable us to understand better the impacts of biotechnology and other biological research on organisms and on the environment. In fact, NSF already conducts such research. Indeed, this House passed a bill just a few weeks ago that charged NSF, again, with conducting such research. That bill introduced by myself and the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Eddie Bernice Johnson), had been approved by the Committee on Science. So I wholeheartedly endorse the idea that NSF should fund this kind of research and they will. My problems with the amendment are narrower, but still significant. First the numbers in the amendment are entirely arbitrary. They may be too large; they may be too small. We have no idea. We have never looked into it. In an area this important, I do not think we should be pulling numbers out of thin air. Second, NSF funds a lot of different scientific disciplines and subdisciplines.”