Lloyd Bentsen: “I guess this legislation is some form of hostage taking, and what we are doing is we are going to release some hostages…”

“I guess this legislation is some form of hostage taking, and what we are doing is we are going to release some hostages like the NIH, and that is good because places like UT Health Sciences Centers at the Texas Medical Center were getting ready to lay researchers off. On the other hand, we are going to continue to hold hostages like NASA. Let me tell you about the Johnson Space Center. At the Johnson Space Center we are going to bring back 1,500 Federal employees who have been furloughed. We are going to start laying off 12,000 contract employees, private employees, privatization, those people in the private sector who are working on the space shuttle and who are working on the space station, and we are going to raise the cost of the space shuttle and the cost of the space station. Now, someone here said this is common-sense Government. I do not know what is common sense about bringing on the Federal employees who are not running the program and paying them to do nothing and then laying off 12,000 employees in the greater Houston area and raising the cost of the space station and raising the cost of the space shuttle. There is nothing common sense about that. It is just plain stupid.”