Tom Wolf: “I would tell the gentleman that the President of the United States failed to do what he was elected to do--that was to…”

“I would tell the gentleman that the President of the United States failed to do what he was elected to do--that was to lead this country--by rejecting the Simpson-Bowles commission recommendation. Mr. Chairman, President Obama supported and appointed the people to the Simpson-Bowles commission. Then we saw in the State of the Union message that none of the cuts that are being done tonight would have had to have been done had the President done what he should have done with regard to the Simpson-Bowles commission. If I had been appointed to the Simpson-Bowles commission, I would have been supportive of it. If Tom Coburn and Dick Durbin can be in support of it, hopefully we can come together in a bipartisan manner; but all of the opposition would not even have had to take place if the President had not failed to provide the leadership that he failed to provide. This bill makes deliberate choices within NASA to strike an appropriate balance between achieving budget savings, procurement support for NASA's $16 billion in annual contracts, and safety and mission assurance to prevent spaceflight accidents. To do this, you would almost guarantee that something could potentially happen. I teach security to prevent the Chinese from having cyber attacks. We had hearings the other day, and we learned that the Chinese have had cyber attacks against NASA's computers. This amendment would say that it's okay, that we can have the cyber attacks. We're going to put it somewhere else.”