Ralph Hall: “once again we have a bad amendment offered by some good guys. Mr. Chairman, opponents of the space station say the…”

“once again we have a bad amendment offered by some good guys. Mr. Chairman, opponents of the space station say the station is going to cost the American taxpayers $94 billion by 2012, as Chairman Brown has pointed out and Chairman Sensenbrenner has pointed out, rather than the $8 billion for construction in 1994. What are the facts? I think we need to go back over the facts one more time. The redesign over the past couple of years has lowered the expected cost. That is a hard, cold fact. The project is two-thirds completed. It is a matter of math. The $94 billion figure is an overstatement because it adds projected operating expenses to the cost of construction. As the chairman has noted in a Dear Colleague that we received some time ago, American taxpayers have invested about $18 billion in the international space station, and we are more than halfway through building the hardware we need. We will spend another $10 billion to complete the space station in 2002, and $13 billion to operate it until the year 2012, Mr. Chairman, for a total of $23 billion. This year's funding, like last year's funding, cost each American an average of 2.2 cents a day. If Members want to hear a real outcry from young America, cancel this space station. The cost of terminating the project would be far greater, thousands of jobs would be lost, and the potential for creating new high-technology industry would absolutely be lost.”