Kay Bailey Hutchison: “I rise to talk about the Senate budget resolution. This is going to be considered for an entire week. It does provide…”

“I rise to talk about the Senate budget resolution. This is going to be considered for an entire week. It does provide the American people with Congress's blueprint for spending and fiscal policies and priorities. And while not binding, it does establish the direction for later consideration of our appropriations bills. I, like many of my colleagues, have been reviewing the chairman's mark that came out of committee and the results from last week's markup. I am impressed with parts of this budget. There are some priorities in here that I share with the chairman and the committee. It fully funds the defense budget. It fully funds NASA, including the additional $1 billion that Senator Mikulski and I sought last year to reimburse the agency for the Columbia disaster, because we know NASA has been pulling from operating funds to repair the damage done from the Columbia disaster, and this has kept it from keeping up its research commitment. We cannot have an agency that is supposed to be doing the state-of-the-art research and pushing the envelope not only in aeronautics but in science and medicine. Yet we have a billion-dollar shortfall taken from the research that could fuel scientists for years to come. It funds the America COMPETES Act, which improves education, and that is such an important priority for us to remain competitive. We need more of our young people to go into science and engineering, the physical sciences, the hard sciences.”