On the recordDecember 21, 2010
Let me personally thank you for your leadership and continued focus on important issues here in this Congress. I rise today to celebrate and to thank the chairman of the Science Committee, Chairman Gordon, for his years of commitment and intensity as it relates to the importance of this work. I also add my appreciation to Chairman-elect Hall, whom I have worked with, as I did Congressman Gordon, for some 12 years on the Science Committee. And once on the Science Committee, one can never leave its values and its importance. As I sat on the Science Committee in the end of the 20th century, I always said that science was the work of the 21st century. And although bills are not perfect, and this bill that has come over from the other body is not, it is where we need to go. And I would simply remind my colleagues of the history of the Model T. When Henry Ford developed the Model T, that technology generated into an enormous industry in the United States that created new technology and millions of jobs, I might say. And so here we are today with a great need to reignite, restart our manufacturing journey. And I am delighted that this bill has seen the vision of getting elementary, middle school, high school students involved in the sciences. That's where our Achilles' heels are. That's where the vision comes to invent things, to make things to develop the next generation of jobs. And so it establishes an interagency with a STEM education coordination committee.
