Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, I find a lot in common with the chairman and the gentlewoman from Minnesota. Certainly in times of emergency we would want to use the assets that are available to us immediately. The amendment says it prohibits the Agency to perform surveying, mapping, or collecting remote sensing data. None of those are, generally speaking, an emergency situation; so I find some agreement, but this is what the amendment says. I just want to let everybody know that this is a $73 billion market, and while we wait around in the United States and wait on the FAA to promulgate rules beyond the line of sight, et cetera, the market moves further and further away from the United States. It drives more than $1 trillion in economic activity. More than 500,000 American jobs are related to the collection, storage, and dissemination of imagery and geospatial data. Another 5.3 million workers utilize such data. As much as 90 percent of the government information has a geospatial information component. Up to 80 percent of the information managed by business is connected to a specific location, and it is identified by the Department of Labor as one of just 14 high-gross sectors of the United States workforce. I find it problematic that we are giving our government a leg up when the private sector is the one that pays for the government, and they are on the cutting edge of this.…”