David Obey: “I simply want to suggest that I do not think that the juxtaposition that the gentleman from Indiana laid out between…”

“I simply want to suggest that I do not think that the juxtaposition that the gentleman from Indiana laid out between spending in space and spending here on the planet is at all illegitimate, as the gentleman seemed to suggest. I remember being thrilled when Alan Shepard went into space, and I am still thrilled by the prospect of space exploration. But times have changed and budgets have changed. When Alan Shepard went in space, we were meeting our obligations to house people on the ground, we were meeting our obligations to our environment, we were meeting our obligations to the poorest among us. We still had national standards for the treatment of persons who were not in the winner's circle. Today, we have none of those. It just seems to me that when we see that this system has been redesigned seven times, when we see that the cost has exploded, when we see that this Congress is apparently willing to kill the low-income heating assistance program to keep houses warm for four million people on the face of the Earth, then I feel no guilt whatsoever in suggesting that we ought to shut down that fancy house in the sky for eight people.”