Lamar Smith: “This morning's hearing will focus on one of the National Science Foundation's most ambitious major research facility…”

I thank the gentleman from California for his comments and also for his initiatives on the subject of energy in so many ways. Several other bills that we are considering are a result of that initiative. Mr. Speaker, I have no other…

First of all, I would like to thank the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Eddie Bernice Johnson) for those nice comments. And she is right, this was a very bipartisan effort and a very bipartisan bill. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the…

With clear Congressional direction, strong White House leadership, and NASA's tremendous expertise, we have all the resources available to make significant progress in human space exploration.

It is truly staggering to behold how this space telescope's cost and schedule projections went from costing the same as a space shuttle mission--around half-a-billion dollars with an original launch date in 2007--to now becoming an…