Lamar Smith: “I thank my colleague from Texas, the Energy Subcommittee chairman, for those nice comments and for yielding me time on…”

“I thank my colleague from Texas, the Energy Subcommittee chairman, for those nice comments and for yielding me time on this bill. H.R. 4376, the Department of Energy Research Infrastructure Act, is an important piece of legislation introduced by Congressman Steve Knight from California. The Department of Energy is the leading sponsor of basic research in the physical sciences, and DOE national labs host over 30,000 researchers each year. To maintain America's global leadership in scientific discovery, we must ensure our user facilities are the best in the world. This bill is also cosponsored by Representative Dan Lipinski, Energy Subcommittee Chairman Randy Weber, and Representative Randy Hultgren, and it authorizes funding from within the DOE Office of Science's existing budget to complete construction of three science infrastructure projects. The bill provides for upgrades to the Advanced Light Source at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and to the Linac Coherent Light Source at the National Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford University. The Knight bill also authorizes and directs the construction of the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams at Michigan State University through the DOE nuclear physics program. All together, the enhanced capabilities made possible by this bill provide significant breakthroughs in discovery science and maintain America's high-tech leadership. I thank the Energy Subcommittee chairman and the gentleman from California (Mr.…”