Jim Sensenbrenner: “I rise in opposition to Mr. Nadler's amendment. It's an overused colloquialism, but this amendment is penny-wise and…”

“I rise in opposition to Mr. Nadler's amendment. It's an overused colloquialism, but this amendment is penny-wise and pound-foolish. If you don't like the Space Station and want to set our human spaceflight program back decades, vote to kill the Space Station. the Roemer/Sanford amendment is intellectually honest in making this choice. Sadly, the amendment before us now offers a false choice. It creates the illusion of savings by reducing a program budget, but the amendment will only increase our costs in the future when NASA has to work overtime to make up for near-term budget shortfalls. Last year, the Committee on Science received testimony from the Chairman of the Cost Assessment and Validation Task Force, which NASA created at the request of Congress. The Chairman of the Task Force, Jay Chabrow, testified that Space Station costs had grown because the Administration underfunded the program. The gentleman from New York's amendment would worsen that problem by cutting $305 million from the space station account. Such a cut promises to increase Station costs in the future. Mr. Chairman, we all know that the sooner we fix a problem the cheaper it is to fix. The only way to fix problems now and prevent them from growing in the future is to provide NASA with enough resources to do the job we're asking it to do. If you support the Space Station, and the vote margins of the last few years make it clear you do, then you should reject this amendment.”