The Space Program
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Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I thank the gentleman from Texas.
Let me start, if I could, for just a second about jobs, because we are talking both inside these Halls and outside about jobs. The President and the Vice President are going on, it's called his recovery summer tour in which he's going to talk about the creation of jobs. In the talking points sent out from the White House, they are talking about the 30,000 miles of new transportation, 80,000 new homes that will be weatherized, 800 programs in parks that are being increased, 2,000 drinking water projects, all in the name of creating jobs.
The President's also asking Congress for $20 billion in additional stimulus money to protect government jobs, in addition to the $135 billion we did in the original stimulus bill to do that. And for only $2 billion--now think of that, less than a tenth of what the President wants in a new stimulus bill to create and protect jobs; a rounding error in either the TARP or the TARP 2 or Son of TARP or Stimulus I or Stimulus II--this administration could protect 25,000 to 30,000 jobs in the private sector.
These are scientists and engineers, and these are the jobs that this administration's policy with NASA are going to let go and give their pink slips.
But early on in the Bush administration, it was decided the space shuttle era had ended. After the problems and the catastrophes with Challenger and Columbia, a Presidential commission came through and decided we wanted to come up with a newer, safer way to go to the Moon, space station and beyond; and the result of that was Constellation.
Constellation is a program that is designed to be safer than the space shuttle by a factor of 10. It's using solid rocket motors because those are the safest type of vehicles. It separates the cargo from the passengers so, if there is a problem, they can be safer. Time magazine called this the best invention of last year. This is the science that we have to come up with the best way of going into the future, and it's built by a free enterprise company. It consists of the Orion capsule where the passengers would be, as well as the Aries rocket that will power it at the same time.
If this White House, if the administration, if NASA gets their way and decides to cancel this greatest invention of the last couple of years, there is no Constellation, there will, as has been said, still be astronauts who need to go up to the space station. As has been said, they will be going up on Russian craft, and in the next year's budget, this administration has already penciled in $75 million per astronaut visit. As has been mentioned by the good gentleman from Texas, Russians have learned the lessons of capitalism, and they realize when they have a monopoly they can play that game. But $75 million per astronaut trip so that we can subsidize the Russian rocket industry.
So that, indeed, as we are looking at the future and we're coming up with this, this summer of recovery is not necessarily going to be about American jobs. The summer of recovery is how we will be spending American taxpayers' money to make sure that the Russian technicians are on the line building Russian missiles. Perhaps the Chinese are on the line starting to build new Chinese missiles so that we can keep their jobs and we will rely on Russian technology because we know how effective that has been in the past, Russian technology for our astronaut visits.
We sometimes ask the question, where are the jobs? Well, in Russian, you also ask it. In their version of where are the jobs, with this policy of this administration, NASA, jobs aren't going to be here. Jobs are going to be in Russia. Jobs are going to be in China, eventually in India; and even Japan's getting in on the trick. That's where those jobs are going to go.
We are firing 30,000 American citizens who have good jobs in science and engineering to build the Constellation program and for what? To lose our leadership in space? To subsidize the Russians and the Chinese industry? To put more Americans out of work in this summer of recovery? It simply does not make sense.
I'd like to enter into an interchange with the gentleman. We've got a lot of things to talk about how this interfaces with our military commitment and what this administration is doing that is totally unusual in trying to push this program forward to destroy--we're not losing the space race this time. We're forfeiting the game.
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Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I appreciate the way the gentleman from Texas has put this. Let's face it: two concepts this administration kept throwing at it: we're going to save money in this and we're going to privatize it, both of those concepts are flat out false.
As has been said, this administration expects to spend $6 billion more on NASA than they are right now without doing any kind of manned space flight, $6 billion more for satellites to do climate control and feeding the hungry in the world. And in addition to that, the money that will now go to these new companies, these startup business companies, this is not free enterprise.
The Constellation went out on a bid that was won by free enterprise companies. The people building right now are free market sector companies. What this administration wants to do is to take the money away from those who are already building Constellation, scrap the program, and then turn over to any other group to come up with a new plan, a new goal. We don't have a new plan or a new goal, but they're going to give it to new companies.
This government is basically saying these private sector companies are now going to be the losers; our friends in this private sector group are now going to be the winners. But as the gentleman from Texas said, this group is not just simply a business free enterprise group. They're already being subsidized by NASA to the point of millions of dollars and have already told NASA they need more.
This has nothing to do with free enterprise. This has everything to do with this administration picking winners and losers among the free enterprise and elements. So those who have the contracts now are going to lose them and lose their jobs, and that money is going to transfer over to another group that is also being subsidized by NASA. It's not free enterprise, this bit, and this is not saving the taxpayers money. This is simply mind-boggling that we are now going to simply say we have no plan for space.
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Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I thank the gentleman from Texas again as both he and Mr. Hall were very eloquent in pointing out the problems that we are facing with the cancellation of the Constellation program by NASA.
I'd like to take one small detour from here to try and point out once again that the decision by this administration to cancel Constellation, by NASA, was done arbitrarily, capriciously, and actually without foresight of what the implications would be and their unintended consequences on our military side. For what this administration did not realize is that the people--the industrial base that builds the rockets to send a man to the moon--are the same people who build the rockets to shoot down North Korean and Iranian missiles that are coming at us. This industrial base is there with the expertise, and if you fire 20,000 to 30,000 of that base, this is not a spigot you can turn on and off and add them back, if indeed by some miraculous idea you think you need to change direction and start over again. That is what we have found--that the impact on NASA has a unique, specific, and dangerous impact on the defense of this country because if we are having a missile defense system, the fact that we are going to fire 25,000 to 30,000 people in this industrial base means that those people will not be working on our missile defense system.
The Defense Authorization Act that passed this House and is now over in the Senate, in the report language it concluded that if indeed Constellation is canceled, the cost to our military for our missile defense program will increase 40 percent to 100 percent, that the increased cost to anything that is propulsion, any of our technical missiles--the HARM missile, the Sidewinder missile, anything that has that propulsion--it will increase the cost for us to build those 40 percent to 100 percent. The Minuteman III cost will double. The Navy's missile program cost will double, and it's at a time when Secretary Gates over at Defense has said that they want the administration to find roughly $100 billion in cuts for next year's budget.
Now, did we ever take the time to figure out the implications of this program? Not only are we firing 30,000 of our best and brightest, our scientists and engineers, not only are we ceding space to the Chinese and the Russians and eventually the Indians and the Japanese, no longer are we forfeiting the game, no longer are we no longer taking a part, we are putting our missile defense system at risk at the very same time. This administration has naively lurched into this program without considering the unintended consequences.
If I could also say one thing in conclusion before I yield back to the gentleman from Texas. There are three things that NASA has done in trying to push this program of cutting Constellation that violate the obvious intent of Congress. Number one, Congress passed in the omnibus appropriations bill language that said the Constellation would not be cut until Congress approves those cuts. Nonetheless, first of all, they deferred the Constellation contracts, didn't terminate them--it was cute--they just deferred them so the money would not flow. Number two, they then moved the Constellation manager--didn't fire him, they just moved him--to disrupt the program. And number three, and a very novel, unique way--in fact, the spokesman said, well, these are unique circumstances--for the first time ever, ever in the history of NASA, they have said termination costs, the liability of termination costs must come from existing contracts. NASA has never done that when it terminated a program. When Congress told it to terminate a program on solid rocket motors, they always appropriated money for the closing costs. What this means is that the premarket private sector companies that are building Constellation right now have got to, from their current contracts, take money out to terminate, which means they fire their employees and they turn to their subcontractors and they break those contacts so they fire their employees. This is all a concentrated effort on the part of NASA and this administration to destroy this program before Congress has a chance to finalize our work and say whether we want it destroyed or not. I think it's very clear that this Congress has never at any time given the indication to NASA that we think Constellation should stop. But this is a program being done by the administration in violation of clearly the intent of Congress and, as the gentleman said, maybe even under the specifics of the rule of law of Congress, to force us into a fait accompli where Congress does not want to go and this Nation should not go.
This is a sad situation, this is sad, this is unprecedented on the part of NASA, and it is not good for the country. I appreciate being able to be a part of this evening tonight because Constellation is very, very important to this country. This is our future. We should not lose that. I yield back to the gentleman from Texas and thank you for allowing me to be a part of this.
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Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I have only one last insight to give, and I appreciate, once again, the gentleman from Texas taking this time to point out how significant this issue is that, indeed, the Constellation program was the way forward into the future. It was to replace the space shuttle. It went through the science. It is our future. It is being built by the private sector. Yet, we are deciding to cancel it with no other goal in mind. We don't have a plan. We don't have a program. We don't even have a name. We don't have an idea for what the future may bring.
There was a study that was done after the last space shuttle catastrophe, and it said there are two things that will destroy manned spaceflight, the mission to manned spaceflight and NASA. Those are, number one, not to consider human safety, as the gentleman has said. Then number two is not to have an organized plan.
I just have, in a note of irony, a flyer that went to all of our offices that came from NASA that tomorrow, in the Rayburn foyer, there will be the new era of innovation and discovery, which means that there will be an interactive, all-day event highlighting NASA's robust Earth and space science portion, cutting-edge aeronautics, and continued leadership in human flight.
I am so grateful that there will be an interactive game that we in Congress can play about spaceflight, because, if the decisions of NASA and of this administration are allowed, there won't be a real manned spaceflight for us to see. At least we'll have a game so that we will remember what we used to do and what might have been.
I yield back.
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