On the recordMay 8, 2012
The bill already includes important increases for trade enforcement, including $15 million for the Interagency Trade Enforcement Center, an increase of nearly $11 million. We pushed Kirk to add Chinese speakers. He wouldn't even do it. He wouldn't even do it. We have pushed him to do it. This is a bad amendment. The offset is a problem. Sometimes you can come here and be for one thing but also want to protect the other. The Cross Agency Support Account is not free money that can be cut without consequences. The committee has already extracted more than $150 million of savings from this account relative to fiscal year 2012, and NASA will not be able to absorb the additional reductions through efficiencies. NASA has already been cut. Now we want to cut it more. These cuts will include critical programmatic functions. These are the functions that they want to kind of cut in there. Cybersecurity, cybersecurity to fend off relentless attacks by China. Their computers have been hit. While NASA is a civil Agency, much of its technology also has military applications, and protecting this information is a national and economic--that area they will be taking money from that. Human space flight safety oversight. We learned the hard way on the Challenger and Columbia tragedies that relentless attention to safety is necessary. Cuts to this account could hamstring NASA's efforts to minimize the risk of loss of life or property.…
