Jim Baird: “I very much appreciate and admire and respect the gentleman from Florida, and I understand full well where he is coming…”

“I very much appreciate and admire and respect the gentleman from Florida, and I understand full well where he is coming from. He has been a passionate supporter of our manned space program, and I share some of his concerns about the impact on that budget. I do think, however, that his offsets are wrong, and that is why I reserved the point of order which in just a moment I will press. There are many, many places in the Federal budget where we could find possible money to support the gentleman's aims, many within, for example, the Commerce appropriations bill. It is possible for the gentleman to adjust revenue impacts of tax cuts. It would be possible for the gentleman to seek offsets or matches through funding for the war in Iraq, which is burning about $2.5 billion per week from our economy. So if the gentleman is interested, as I know he is, in supporting space flight and continued investment in that, I would suggest that more appropriate offsets are available elsewhere in the Federal budget. And I would also say it would be just terribly unfortunate to hold the Science Foundation budget, which this bill authorizes, hostage. You've got the wrong hostage. There are other places where lots more money is being reduced from the revenue stream or being expended on things that may not be in the best long-term national interest of this country.”