Dale Bumpers

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, this will be the eighth year that I have stood here and debated whether or not America should go forward with a space station. I didn't like the idea of the Space Station Freedom, but it was probably a bargain compared to what the International Space Station is turning out to be. First, I would like to pose a question to my colleagues: Why is it that we continue to fund a program called the International Space Station, when every cellular biologist, every medical researcher, and every physicist in America who isn't involved in the program itself is vehemently opposed to it? These are some of the most brilliant people in America. Before we start off spending $100 billion, we ought to ask ourselves, Why are they opposed? Well, for very good reasons, and I will come back to those in just a minute. It is a mystery that here in Congress we talk seriously about a program which in the last 3 years has become almost laughable. If it weren't so serious and the amount of money so enormous, it would be almost a comedy--a comedy of errors. The cost began to spiral in 1996--maybe before that, but that was the first time we really knew it. The Russians have had space stations up for almost 30 years. The Mir is the seventh space station that the Russians have had up since 1971. And what do they have to show for it? Absolutely nothing. In a little while, I will come back and quote some of the top Nobel Prize winners, some of the top physicists in America, cellular biologists--you name it. I will come back and quote several of them and what they have had to say about the space station as a research vehicle. Now, you should bear in mind throughout this debate that when you talk about research on the space station, there is only one reason--one reason--you have to believe that the kind of research we are going to do, which NASA says will cure ingrown toenails, warts, cancer, sties-- it will cure everything--you have to believe that research of whatever kind--mostly medical, and some of it molecular biology--but you have to believe that something happens in a microgravity situation that you can't emulate on earth, and not only is something going to happen in a microgravity situation, but it is going to be good. Again, I will come back to what the top scientists in this country have to say about it. But right now I will quote Professor Bloembergen, who is a top physicist at Harvard University. When he was President of the American Physical Society, which consists of 40,000 physicists, and, he summed it up when he said, ``microgravity is of micro importance.'' John Glenn came to the Senate with me. We developed a warm friendship the first day we met and we have remained friends. I consider him one of my dearest friends, except when I bring this amendment up. But Senator Glenn is not going to deny that about all you get out of this is whatever you can get from microgravity research that can be emulated on earth; but there is no need to emulate it on earth. You are going to hear all this business about gallium arsenide crystals, which is ``bunk.'' Even if you could build crystals on the space station, nobody on earth could afford to use them. Well, Mr. President, why are all these people opposed? Why are the top people on whom we rely for all of our medical research, cellular research--the top scientists in America--why are they outraged by spending $100 billion on one orbiting space station with a crew of, at first three people, and subsequently six or seven people? Why are they outraged? Well, one reason might be that they come up here pleading for money for honest-to-God research every year, and we give them a few shekels and off they go to do the best they can with it. Think about the National Institutes of Health getting about $13 billion a year, and they do research on everything--honest research. They send out money to every university in the country that has a medical school to do research. Well, if we ever get this thing in space, just the annual operating cost will be enough to fund 6,000 researchers at NIH and universities across America for a year. We are going to have six people on the space station doing what the National Research Council estimates to be 24 hours of research each day, at a cost at which we could hire 6,000 researchers on earth. Do you want to hear another one? Once we get it deployed, we are going to leave it in space for 10 years. You multiply the man-hours by 10 years that we are going to get in research, and if you don't just divide the annual operating costs, which, as I said a moment ago, would produce 6,000 researchers on earth, but divide it into the entire $100 billion cost, which is a legitimate thing to do because, after all, we are spending $100 billion to put the space station up and do research-- whether you are going to build crystals or cure ingrown toenails, it is all research. But when you do that, the cost of each man-hour of research on the space station is $11.5 million per hour. Now, if that doesn't stagger people, what would? Here we starve the National Institutes of Health, we starve the Food and Drug Administration, we starve the Centers for Disease Control, and we are embarking on a program that will cost $100 billion, which translates into $11.5 million for every hour of research that will be done on that thing over a 10-year period. So can you see why I raise my voice? I can't believe it. It is so patently absurd and outrageous. And the ordinary layman in America thinks the space station is a pretty good idea. The Russians did it, why shouldn't we? But let's go to the original promises. Mr. President, not only are all of the scientists in America opposed to it, I will give you another reason that Congress ought to be opposed to it. It is because we have just had one broken promise after another from NASA. My good friend from Ohio has heard me say this many times. Let me get this off my conscience right now. I believe in NASA and I believe in the space program. I thought the Mars Pathfinder Program was wonderful. We sent an unmanned rover to Mars, and it took magnificent pictures and sent them back to earth. It gave us a much, much better comprehension, for whatever it may be worth, of what is on Mars. So I want everybody to understand that this is not an anti-NASA speech or amendment; this is an antispace station amendment. In September 1993, there was a solemn promise that was made to Congress and, therefore, to the American people. This is what a briefing paper on NASA's Web site says: In September 1993, a program implementation program called PIP had been developed in the baseline for the new International Space Station. The plan was coordinated with and agreed to by all existing partners. Based on this PIP, NASA reached agreement with the Clinton administration and with Congress that the International Space Station would be implemented with a flat budget of $2.1 billion a year. Let me indelibly ingrain that on your brain. NASA said we will do this for $2.1 billion a year. And we will build it. Bear in mind, there are three stages: Building it, deploying it, and operating it. The NASA briefing paper goes on to say: NASA promised that the program would remain on schedule and within the annual $2.1 billion and the runout $17.4 billion budget and that no additional funds will be sought. In exchange the program will be required to redesign and rescope the station. A solemn promise of $2.1 billion. But, as they say, something happened on the way to the forum. We are now up to $98 billion-plus and heading north. They also promised us that this thing would be finished by June of 2002. Again, something happened on the way to the forum. I will come back to that in just a moment. But we should have noticed back in 1996. If we had been paying attention in 1996, we would have known that something was happening. Precisely what was happening was, NASA transferred $235 billion from other programs within NASA to the space station. They did that with the approval of the appropriate committees of Congress here. I assume it was the Commerce and Appropriations Committees. But what else did they do? They then changed their accounting system so they could transfer another $100 million over to the space station. That $300 million didn't count against the $17.4 billion that the cost of this thing was supposed to be. It didn't count against the $2.1 billion they promised they would use every year and not ask for more. In 1997, guess what. The same song, second verse. In 1997, they transferred $200 million from the shuttle program to the space station because they had decided that Russia was not going to be able to come through with its part of the bargain their very first component-- building the service module. They decided they might have to build it. So they transferred $200 million from the shuttle program to build what they call an interim control module. Then they again transferred $100 million from other accounts--mostly scientific accounts. So we are not going to get as much science as we planned, because they have already taken $100 million of that out, and this $300 million did not count against the annual $2.1 billion appropriations. Then in a hearing before the Senate Commerce Committee last year--I think it was in May--Boeing, the prime contractor, and NASA both appeared before the Senate Commerce Committee. Boeing said, in a rare admission, that it their part of the program was going to cost $600 million more than we anticipated. That didn't include the $600 million that had already been transferred by NASA from other accounts. NASA said that is true. But in that same hearing, they said the figure was not going to be $600 million in cost overrun, it would be $817 million. They also said in 1998 that they are going to need still another $430 million extra. I mean we are getting bombarded by transfers from other accounts, transfers with and without the permission of Congress, admitted cost overruns of $817 million on top of that. And we are going to need another $430 million in 1998. So, Mr. President, the thing is beginning to sort of roll out of control. And Dan Goldin, Administrator of NASA, takes the extra precaution, with, I think, a little prodding by Congress, to appoint a task force to look into this whole thing. He made Jay Chabrow, one of the premier space technology analysts in America, chairman of what is called the Chabrow Commission. They were formulated, I think, and appointed in September and went to work in November. And on April 15, 1998, they came back to the Congress and to NASA and said that the $21.3 billion that NASA admitted the station would cost in its FY 1999 budget was not enough. I should have mentioned that before. In their budget for 1999 NASA admitted that the space station was not going to cost $17.4 but, rather, $21.3 billion. They wish. Jay Chabrow, in whom Dan Goldin obviously put a great deal of confidence, comes back and says, ``Would you believe $24.7 billion?'' That is a $7.3 billion overrun--43 percent--just to build it on the ground before we have put the first piece of hardware in space. Chabrow went ahead to say you are not going to finish it in the year 2002. It is going to take 10 to 38 months longer to deploy the space station than you have been admitted, more likely 2 years. So, instead of the year 2003, it is going to be finished in late 2005, or early 2006 at best. Do you know what those kinds of delays mean in a program like this? Billions. If this had been anybody other than somebody like Jay Chabrow, with the credibility and reputation he has, everybody could have swatted it like a fly. But you cannot ignore this prestigious commission. Do you know what else? The Chabrow Commission went ahead to say this $7.3 billion overrun assumes that the Russians, our big partner in the space station, will perform on time. Mr. President, let's go to the next stage, deploying the space station. It is going to take, according to the latest figures from NASA, about 83 launches to deploy it. That means taking all of these parts into space over the period of the next 63 months, putting them together in space, and becoming what we call the International Space Station. When Jay Chabrow's commission said the cost overrun is going to be $7.3 billion, he went ahead to say ``if the Russians fulfill their part of this bargain.'' The Russians were scheduled to deploy the service module--a very important element in the space station--April 1998. Then it was going to be December 1998. Now we are up to April 1999. Do you know what those delays do? They cost billions. Do you know something else? Colleagues, let me ask you. Do you think the Russians can fulfill their part of this program? The Russians, who just barely have enough money to get a rescue team up to the Mir and rescue them, and whose electricity has been cut off at their primary cosmodrome at Baikonur. The electricity has been cut off because they won't pay their bills, and the reason they don't pay their bills is that they do not have the money. The reason they don't have the money is that the central government doesn't have the money to send to the Russian Space Agency. The Russians are our partners. I feel sorry for them. This statement is not intended to condemn the Russians. But to think that we are gambling $100 billion on assuming that the Russians will provide 49 of the 83 launches it is going to take to put this thing in orbit. We are depending on the Russians to do that? Do you remember when the Vice President went over to talk to Chernomyrdin and Chernomyrdin told the Vice President not to worry, that the money is going to be coming? The money did not come. The money has not come. Now, Mr. President, there is one admission I want to make right now. I would tell Daniel Goldin and the administration at NASA, forget Russia. I don't know what it is going to cost for the United States to assume its share of this burden, but whatever it is will be less than waiting for them to perform. They cannot perform. It is sad, and I am sorry, but the Russians are not going to be able to hold up their share of the bargain. The European Space Agency--I think there are 14 countries in the European Space Agency--is in this, and you are going to hear all these loud laments: We can't quit now; it is an international project. It is an international project with the United States putting up $100 billion and everybody else putting up $15 billion. The French are members of the European Space Agency. They have a very clever Space Minister, Claude Allegre. Do you know what he said? ``It is time to get out. This was a mistake.'' He went ahead to say, ``People often do stupid things. There is no rule that says we have to applaud them.'' They are in for 27 percent of the European Space Agency's share, which is around $9 billion to $10 billion, and they want out. They do not want to hear all these patriotic songs on the Senate floor about how this international cooperation is just wonderful. They want to save their 27 percent and get out while the getting is good. And as Claude Allegre, the Space Minister, said, ``I have never seen any research that would justify this kind of expenditure.'' Mr. President, some studies have been done which indicate that even if Russia could perform right on time, out of those 83 launches, 5 of the Russian launches could be failures under the best of circumstances--5 of those launches would be failures and 1 United States launch would be a failure. In addition there will be launch delays. You have a 5-minute window. Senator Glenn is familiar with all of this. You have a 5-minute window to launch those things. If you don't do it in the 5 minutes, Lord knows how long you have to wait. To assume that 83 launches to just get this thing into orbit are going to go off without a hitch, without a flaw, is naive and simplistic in the extreme. Going back to NASA's promises, in 1993, they said that in order to assemble this thing in space, it is going to require our astronauts to engage in what they called ``extravehicular activity,'' space walks for short, and it will take 434 man-hours, 434 man-hours of space walking to assemble this thing. In 1995, they said, no, it is going to take 888, a little over twice as many as we first said. In 1996, they said, no, it is going to take 1,104 hours of space walking. In 1997, in April, they said, no, it is going to take 1,520 hours. And in December of 1997, they said, no, it is going to take 1,729 hours. There is a nice, solid 400-percent increase or, if you choose, a 400-percent mistake. Mr. President, we ought to expect something as a return on our investment. We send our children and grandchildren, our most precious possessions, off to school every morning. All of us got teary-eyed as we sent our children off to school the first time. And incidentally, we sent them for 7 or 8 hours that day to be with a teacher who was going to have almost as much, and possibly more, influence on that child than the parents. How many debates have you heard in this Chamber about how the school buildings in this country are deteriorating? And how many debates have you heard about how we have to lower the size of the classes? Incidentally, that is a lot bigger issue. I haven't had any children in school in some time. I have grandchildren, and one of my daughters-in- law told me the other day my grandson was in a class with 34 students, and that is not extraordinary; that is fairly common, even though every educator will tell you anytime a classroom is bigger than 20 students, the chances of that child getting a decent education go down dramatically. Twenty is the optimum size for classrooms. So we wail endlessly on the floor of the Senate about our commitment to the education of these children, to teachers. That teacher to whom we send our child off to be with 7, 8 hours a day in my State, his or her entry level salary is in the $20- to $25,000 range. Just as an aside--this doesn't cost anybody anything-- if I were President Clinton, I would tell the American people I hope to raise teacher's salaries to $50,000 a year. I married a schoolteacher, and I can tell you categorically it is the roughest, toughest job in America. I would work for the Washington sanitation department before I would teach elementary and secondary education. And we pay tribute to them but we don't pay them money. Around here you hear all of these things. When we were marking the Agriculture Appropriations bill, virtually every Member of the Senate came to Senator Cochran or me or both saying, please, help me with this little project back home; we just need $400,000 for this; if we could just get $1.5 million for that. Do you know what Senator Cochran and I were dealing with? A budget that was $1 billion less than last year, a little over $13 billion for the whole Agriculture Department of America. This cost overrun just to build the space station on Earth would fund 50 percent of the agriculture budget. Think what it would do to send children to college. Think what it would do to improve teacher's salaries. We tried to appropriate $5 billion to upgrade the classrooms in this country. And we are talking about a $7.3 billion overrun here. Well, you trust the teacher with your child because oftentimes it is a joy to do it and sometimes because you have to. I started off this debate by saying that Congress is arrogating to itself a knowledge it does not possess as to what kind of research is likely to go on on the space station. If you think it can only happen on a space station, or if you think there is something peculiar about microgravity that we have to do all of this research in a vacuum, let me read to you, at the expense of boring you to tears, a few quotes. Here is Dr. Ursula Goodenough, a cell biologist from the University of Washington and past president of the American Society for Cell Biology. She wrote to Dan Goldin, the administrator of NASA, and said: The frontier of microgravity never did interest first-rate scientists, physical or biological. And this is all the more true now that it is clear that nothing of any real interest has emerged from the many in-flight studies on the effects of microgravity on this or that. John Pike, of the American Federation of Scientists: As soon as the most visible justification for piloted space craft becomes science, you got BS detectors going off all over America. Here is Marcia Smith. Marcia Smith is with the Congressional Research Service and probably knows as much or more about space than any person in America. She has done a report that is very current, issued in the month of July, that before any Senator votes to continue spending up to $100 billion or $150 billion, that Senator ought to read. Here is what she said in a publication in 1995: I don't know of any breakthroughs that have come out of Russian space station programs in terms of new or cheaper-to- produce materials or scientific discoveries. Mostly, they have learned how to operate a space station for longer periods of time. Longer periods of time--nothing in there about cancer, AIDS, myopia-- nothing. They say the Russians have had space stations up for almost 30 years, Mir being the last one, and what have they learned? They have learned how to keep space stations up for longer periods of time. Here is a quote from Tim Beardsley, Scientific American. He, in turn, is quoting Elliott C. Levinthal, a former program director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. And he says: Levinthal, who has been a professor of genetics and mechanical engineering at Stanford University, asserts that no neutral committee handing out funds for basic research in biology would support microgravity studies. James Ferris, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, June, 1996: Nothing has come out of microgravity research to convince me that a material can be fabricated in orbit that is going to be better than what you can make on Earth. Why are we spending $150 billion if you believe that? Here is Dr. James Van Allen. Did you ever hear of the Van Allen radiation belt? One and the same person. With the benefit of over three decades in space flight, it is now clear that the conduct of scientific and applicational missions in space by human crews is of very limited value. He goes on to say: For almost all scientific and utilitarian purposes a human crew in space is neither necessary nor significantly useful. That is pretty powerful stuff from a man like Van Allen, isn't it-- not necessary or useful? Here is Dr. Allen Bromley, Presidential Science Adviser, March 11, 1991, in a letter to the Vice President: The space station is needed to find means of maintaining human life during long space flights. This is the only scientific justification, in our view, and all future design efforts should be focused on this one purpose. That is George Bush's Vice President, Dan Quayle. That is back before Al Gore and Bill Clinton. And Dr. Bromley is writing to the Vice President, saying bear in mind that the only scientific justification should be focused on one purpose and that is maintaining human life during long flights. The American College of Physicians--medical doctors. The American College of Physicians: We agree that much, if not all, of the money slated for the space station, the superconducting super collider, SDI, and for Defense Intelligence could be better spent on improving the health of our citizens, stimulating economic growth, and reducing the deficit. That was in 1992 when people thought the deficit was absolutely out of control and so was Congress. And sometimes I wonder about Congress today, when I see us appropriating money to keep this thing going. Here is one from the American Physical Society, all the physicists in America: The principal scientific mission of the station is to study the effects on humans of prolonged exposure to a space environment. Listen to this: Medical researchers scoff at claims that these studies might lead to cures for disease on Earth. Why, you are going to hear all these things about, ``We don't know what is up there; we have to go up there and find out.'' We have been going up there for 30 years. We have been in space for 30 years. The space station will keep us there longer, but we have been there before. On cancer research--that is one of the things you always hear about, cancer research. Everybody deplores and is so frightened of cancer and AIDS and other terminal diseases like that. All you have to do is throw ``cancer research'' out and you can have all the money you want. And here is what Dr. David Rosenthal at the Harvard Medical School said on behalf of the American Cancer Society: We cannot find valid scientific justification for these claims and believe it is unrealistic to base a decision on funding the space station on that information. . . . Based on the information we have seen thus far, we do not agree that a strong case has been made for choosing to do cancer research in space over critically needed research [right] here on Earth. Mr. President, I will save some of the other quotes. I know it gets a little tiresome listening to somebody read on the Senate floor. I get a little wrought-up in debating this issue. But you show me somebody who can't get wrought-up over an issue and he ought not to be on the floor of the Senate. If you don't feel strongly enough about it to get excited and agitated about it, maybe you should not offer it in the first place. This is my last year in the Senate. This is my eighth and last effort to kill this program. But this year I am doing something a little different. Of the $2.3 billion we are talking about putting in the program for 1999--I would terminate the space station. It will cost roughly $800 million to terminate it. I would take $1 billion that is left over and put it in veterans medicine. The veterans have been squealing like a pig under a gate about how they have been mistreated this year, and they have been mistreated. If anybody in this body wants to redeem themselves, here is a chance to ingratiate themselves with every veterans organization in this country, who are totally wired to the fact that they have been shorted by the tune of about $1 billion. So I will put $1 billion of this in veterans programs. And I will put $450 million into low-rent housing. We are doing a magnificent job during this unprecedented era of prosperity; 67 percent of the people in this country own their own homes, or like me, have a fighting interest in one. But people who are poor and people who work that are poor, 60 percent of them spend over 50 percent of their wages on a home, on a house, on rents. The poor people always get the shaft, don't they? I have always thought they did. If it hadn't been for the Government providing me with the GI bill to go to a prestigious law school, I wouldn't be standing here right now. It was that mean old Government that everybody talks about how terrible it is that gave my brother and me a great education and gave us a fighting chance that we might otherwise not have had. People don't like to admit it, but the truth of the matter is, most people who make it in this world make it because they had a little luck along the way or because the Government gave them a little hand with an education or a small business loan or some kind of Government assistance. A lot of them, like me, got all three--luck, Government help, and I chose my parents well. Everybody doesn't get that chance. A lot of people do a miserable job of choosing their parents, but they can't help it. We can help it. We can do something for the least among us. I call on my colleagues for one time to rise above the politics of this. Eighty- five percent of the money goes to Alabama, California, and Texas. The rest don't have that much money in your State to warrant voting a bad vote. Anybody who can't justify a ``no'' vote on the space program doesn't have much business being here. Maybe you feel strongly about it, and I am not going to quarrel about that, but if you are looking for a political justification, anybody who can't justify voting to kill that thing has no business being in the debate on the floor of the Senate. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Mr. Glenn addressed the Chair.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I yield 15 minutes to my colleague from Arkansas.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I yield my distinguished colleague from Iowa 10 minutes.

Mr. BUMPERS. I yield an additional 5 minutes to the Senator from Iowa.

Mr. BUMPERS. Does the Senator from Maryland wish the floor?

Mr. BUMPERS. I only have 4 minutes 20 seconds. I fully expect the Senator from Illinois to use all of that. My time will be used.

Mr. BUMPERS. Under the unanimous-consent agreement we will still have 5 minutes each prior to the vote. Is that correct?

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I yield myself 3 minutes. I assume most everybody in this Senate now understands that we are debating an amendment that would terminate the space station, save $80 billion over the next 15 years, and this year alone put $1 billion in veterans medicine, $450 million into low-rent housing. I hate to call a program that has been successful in most ways, almost comical, but there is no way to describe what is going on with the space station right now any other way. We have been told from the beginning it would cost $17.4 billion to build the station on Earth. There are three stages: No. 1, you have to build it; No. 2, you have to put it in space; No. 3, you have to operate it for 10 years. What are we looking at? We are looking at a $100 billion cost today. Since last October 1, since last October 1, the Chabrow Commission, appointed by Daniel Goldin, the administrator of NASA, Jay Chabrow, probably the best space policy analyst in America, comes back and says the first part is not going to cost $17.4 billion; NASA is going to take 10 to 38 months longer than they told you, and it will cost $24.7 billion. That is $7.3 billion--a 43-percent cost overrun and we haven't even finished building it yet. If you think that is a cost overrun, wait until the Russians start reneging. Jay Chabrow says you will not have this thing finished in early 2003. You will be lucky to have it finished early 2006. So when the Russians start reneging on their part of it, we have about 80 launches to deploy this thing, and the Russians are going to be responsible for about 40 of them, between 40 and 49. Who here believes that a country who can't even pay the electric bill at their principal cosmodrome is going to come through on their commitment with that many flights? Every time they renege it will cost us close to $1 billion. I asked my colleagues this afternoon, and I repeat the challenge, I have talked endlessly about the cost overruns we are experiencing and the ones we are going to experience, and according to the way we have debated this thing this afternoon, those cost overruns are like Ross Perot's crazy aunt in the basement; we ignore it. I can tell you that crazy aunt in the basement will have a lot of company unless we kill this program now. You can save $80 billion. We have yet to spend $80 billion. If the cost overruns are anything even close to what they are looking at now, what Jay Chabrow says is a distinct possibility, you are talking about $100 billion to $150 billion, and every research scientist in America says it is of highly questionable value. As a matter of fact, virtually every one of them are adamantly opposed to it. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BUMPERS. Reserving the right to object, and I am most reluctant to, I would like, in this eighth year of my travail, to get an up-or-down vote on this.

Mr. BUMPERS. I thank the Senator. I am more than happy to forego having the space station named after me.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. President, first of all, let me remind my colleagues of how this all started. This is a classic case of a space station looking for justification. This chart shows where we started years ago, with a crew size of eight and a cost of $8 billion. Here are the capabilities we were told that the space station would have. First of all, it would be a staging base to go on to Mars with. Carl Sagan said that was a justification for it. He didn't think much of its research potential. But as a staging base to Mars, he thought it was a great idea. A manufacturing facility--make gallium arsenide crystals, I suppose; space-based observatory; a transportation node; a servicing facility, to service shuttles or whoever might come up to visit the space station; assembly facility--I don't know what they were going to assemble; a storage facility. One by one, every single one of those missions was eliminated as a justification for the space station. We have one remaining, and that is a research laboratory. So that is the reason you hear about how we are going to cure AIDS, cancer, and all these magnificent things that will happen in medical research in the space station--because that is the last only justification anybody can dream up. If you are having difficulty with that, write NASA and ask Administrator Goldin to send you a copy of his Chamber of Commerce glossy. It has it all in here. It has it all. If you are a conservative--and most people in this body profess to be conservatives--and you have any pang of conscience about spending $100 billion for a boondoggle, for utterly no redeemable purpose, if you are having problems with that, write to NASA and get their glossy brochure. It will just make you sleep so much better. Mr. President, I can remember, as the Senator from Iowa has pointed out, it took me 4 years to kill the Clinch River breeder. Howard Baker was majority leader, and no matter how close we got, he always had two more votes he could pull out of his pocket. I remember that fateful date when we had too many votes for him to pull out of his hip pocket, and he turned everybody loose, and we got 75 or 80 votes to torpedo the Clinch River breeder. Who has lost any sleep about the Clinch River breeder? And we saved billions. Everybody said, ``They have broken ground; it is too late. We can't quit now; we have our nose under the tent.'' We quit, and it has been God's blessing ever since we did. The Superconducting Super Collider, the gigantic hole in the ground in Texas--all I can think about is the Senator from Texas, the senior Senator from Texas, who defended the hole in the ground until the last dog died. I was arguing all along that there was a superconducting super collider in Switzerland, at the European consortium called CERN. No, the SSC's supporters said, our's got to be bigger than that one; got to be more expensive than that; got to have a 50-mile racetrack; none of that 20 mile racetrack business. We finally killed it after we spent $2 billion. And who here has lost any sleep over the Superconducting Super Collider? Everybody ought to rejoice every night that we saved $10 billion. So now here we go. How can a good conservative justify the kind of cost overruns we are looking at? How can you justify $100 billion when you think of the unmet needs in health care and education in this country? This program as a research vehicle is precisely 1,000 times less effective than doing the same research on Earth. So you ask, why are we doing it? The Senator from Texas has a very legitimate reason for standing on the floor and defending the space station. Texas gets $661 million a year out of it. In all candor, I might be standing here up here arguing on the other side if Arkansas got $661 million a year. For my colleagues who think you have a few jobs in your State, 85 percent of this money goes to Alabama, Texas, and California. The rest of you are just barely a layer; you are nothing. If you consider yourselves a conservative but only when it fits your convenience, you go ahead and vote against my amendment. But if you say you are a conservative and you don't believe in squandering billions and billions of dollars of the taxpayers' money, ask yourself a very simple question: What is your threshold? How high would this thing have to go before you would have to rethink your position? Forty-three percent cost overrun, just to build it on the ground? Is that not troubling to you? Is the $7.3 billion overrun just announced in the past 8 months, is that not troubling to you? Is the fact that we are already acknowledging a $7.3 billion cost overrun and headed in for the launching of this thing into space, and depending on the Russians for 49 launches, does that bother you? Who here believes that the Russians will be a player in this 1 year from now? They are not going to meet their deadline right now for launching the service module or what they call the functional cargo. If we are going to keep the Russians in the program, buy them out right now. They are not going to participate. They can't. Let me reiterate. The Russian Cosmodrome at Baikonur, the principal launching place, which is in Kazakhstan, has the electricity cut off because they don't pay their bills. How can you launch a space station from a cosmodrome that has had its utilities cut off? My junior colleague from Arkansas, Senator Hutchinson, invited you to read the GAO report. Let me add the Congressional Research Service report to that. You don't have to believe what I say or what Senator Harkin said or Senator Hutchinson. Read the reports that you always rely on, and see what they say. Take a look at this chart. This summarizes the so-called Chabrow report. The Chabrow Commission was appointed by Dan Goldin to analyze the space station. They were appointed by Goldin, and Jay Chabrow is considered one of the best space technology analysts in America. He says it will not cost $17.4 billion as NASA promised as recently as last year; it will cost $24.7 billion--a little over $7.3 billion cost overrun. How many children in America could you educate with that? How many teachers' salaries could you educate with that? How many classrooms could you build with that? How many students could you cut out of classrooms with $7 billion? We act like it is nothing around here. Nobody even gasps; nobody drew a deep breath when I started throwing these figures out. I commend my distinguished colleague from Maryland, and I thank her most heartily and profoundly for her kind words about my efforts on this. She mentioned the yellow lights that I had thrown up. I attended a meeting that she and the distinguished chairman of the subcommittee allowed me to attend, and in that hearing--incidentally, Daniel Goldin was testifying--I asked this question: ``Mr. Goldin, is there a threshold for you? Is there a figure beyond which you are not willing to go? Is there a cost figure on the space station you are not willing to go beyond?'' He must have paused at least 15 seconds. Finally, he said, ``I really hadn't thought about it.'' I have thought a lot about it. I have thought almost of nothing else since I started working on this. So I ask my colleagues, what is your threshold? In 1984, when Ronald Reagan first started talking about a space station at $8 billion, and now we are talking about $100 billion. Let me show you something. You see this $98 billion figure here? That is not all of it. No. 1, the cost overruns are going to skyrocket from here on. But even if they didn't, this does not include getting the space station down. Add $3 billion for that. So you are already well over $100 billion. When Ronald Reagan said it would be $8 billion to build this thing, I can only shutter to think what Ronald Reagan might think today if his $8 million was up to $100 billion. The conservatives who were in the Senate when Ronald Reagan was President would be gasping for breath. Nobody ever believed we were headed for such a pickle. If you believe that all the premier scientists in America don't know what they are talking about when they say microgravity research is of micro importance, vote no, vote against my amendment. If you think we are already spending enough at NIH on cancer, Alzheimer's, cardiovascular illnesses, vote no. If you think $11.5 million per man- hour for every hour of research that goes on in the space station is reasonable, vote against my amendment. That is right, $11.5 million an hour--as the Senator from Iowa has already said, at NIH you can get researchers who are the best in the country for $300 an hour. Divide the man-hours for research that you are going to get for this program for 10 years into $100 billion, it comes out to a cool $11.5 million per man-hour. Is nobody disturbed by this? Mr. President, I am reluctant to start reading it to you again. But I do want to quote Dr. Robert Park, a professor of physics at the University of Maryland and who has long been the spokesman for the American Physical Society, which is all the physicists in America. Here is what he said while testifying before a committee in the House on July 1, 1993. He was speaking for the American Physical Society, which is 40,000 physicists. I promise you that virtually every one of them--except those who are employed by NASA--are opposed to this. Dr. Park, in testimony, speaking for all those physicists, said: It is in the view of the American Physical Society that scientific justification is lacking for a permanently manned space station in Earth's orbit. We are concerned that the potential contribution of a manned space station to the physical sciences has been greatly overstated and that many of the scientific objectives currently planned for the space station could be accomplished more effectively, with a much lower cost, on Earth. It goes on and on. He has a magnificent statement. He says: The only unique property for the space station environment is microgravity. In 23 years of research, it has found little to no advantage from such an environment. Mr. President, what are we afraid of? Here we have a chance to save $80 billion. That ``ain't'' beanbags. We are going to spend an additional $80 billion minimum on this program, plus the 20-something billion we have already spent. If we continue to rely on the Russians, you can depend on the space station costing $120 billion to $150 billion, easily--the most monumentally expensive scientific undertaking in the history of the world, all at the expense of the taxpayers. I plead with you--plead with you--to use your common sense. You don't have to abandon common sense when you come on to the floor of the Senate. I promise you that you can justify this to your constituents. I said earlier, and I will say again, if you can't justify a vote against this program, you have no business being in the U.S. Senate. Mr. President, I know there are legitimate concerns by people who have honest differences with me. I would certainly never denigrate my friend, John Glenn. I know he believes fervently in this. We all wish him well in the endeavor he is about to take in another trip to space, and we applaud him. As far as I am concerned, I hope they get some beneficial research out of him. But I can tell you that he didn't have to go into a research project. If he just wanted to go up there and look out the window, it would be fine with me, and it would be fine with everybody else in America, too. Before I ever met him, he was a hero of mine. I had tears in my eyes, like every American did, when we saw John Glenn get out of that capsule. We all shared in his joy. We have shared the joy of John and Annie ever since he came to the Senate. We love him and we wish him well on everything--except the vote on this space station. I yield the floor.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, happily we have a Senator here. I have 4 minutes 20 seconds remaining. I would like to yield that to Senator Durbin. Mr. DURBIN addressed the Chair.

Mr. BUMPERS. The Senator from Texas just alluded to curing breast cancer and curing several other diseases. You could fund the National Institutes of Health God knows how many times for what this thing will cost. You are not going to cure anything with this. That is the reason America's physicists, cell biologists, and medical scientists are all opposed to it. You know what this space station is going to cost per man-hour of research?--$11.5 million per hour. Can you imagine us, with our eyes wide open, saying we are going to build a space station for research purposes that will cost $11.5 million an hour. It is the height of irresponsibility. The American people have a right to expect us to be fiscally responsible. I want to ask my colleagues in closing, how far are you willing to go? What is the threshold beyond which you are not willing to go? We have gone from $8 billion to $100 billion for the space station and we are headed for $150 to $200 billion. We kill the Super Collider, we kill the Clinch River Breeder, and who here misses them? We save America billions of dollars. You have a chance to save $80 billion right now and help veterans, help veterans and help people who are desperately needing low-rent housing. I plead with my opponents to support this amendment.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, we are embarked on buying the most expensive fighter plane in the history of the United States. As a matter of fact, three times more expensive than any fighter plane in the history of the United States, the F-22, $182 million each, $62 billion total--which will surely go to $100 to $125 billion before we are finished. When we first started talking about it, the Air Force said we will test this plane, preproduction, 1,400 hours. In 1997, they said no, 600 hours. Now this bill says 183 hours, if the Secretary will certify a couple of little deals. You wouldn't buy a golf cart that hadn't been tested more than 183 hours. We are going right down the B-1, B-2 lane. I can tell you, we are headed for big-time trouble. All I want to say is, not only is this plane very expensive, it is simply not going to work.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, the Air Force is in the process of buying by far the most expensive fighter plane the United States has ever bought by a magnitude of 300 percent, to be precise. And that is if we can build it at today's estimated cost. I have not made any bones about the fact that I don't think we need the F-22, but we are going to get it. I lost the battle to terminate the program, I admit. But if we are going to spend $62 to $100 billion for 339 airplanes, we at least ought to fly that sucker before we buy it. And therein lies the problem. My staff found--the distinguished Presiding Officer will find this interesting--a copy of an article from the January 9, 1989, Atlanta Constitution. The Presiding Officer is familiar with that newspaper. And the headline is ``The B-2: Fly Before You Buy.'' How many times have my colleagues heard that term, ``fly before you buy''? No less than a thousand. My colleague, Senator Pryor, used to screech to the roof of this Chamber about buying weapons before they have been tested. Let me begin with a little history of the F-22. It is the Pentagon's intention--and they usually get their way--to buy advanced F-18s, the so-called E/F model. We are going to buy 30 of those next year. Then the Pentagon also plans to buy the F-22, which is supposed to be the greatest, most sophisticated piece of weaponry in the history of the world. And we are going to buy 339 of those. And then in the year 2005 we will start buying 3,000 Joint Strike Fighters. It is going to be stealthy, and it is going to be everything that anybody could ever conjure up. It will be used by the Navy, the Marine Corps, the Air Force, the Brits, and perhaps some other members of NATO. Mr. President, we are buying all these fighters in spite of the fact that the intelligence community and everybody who knows anything about an airplane knows that there isn't a plane in the world--in France, in Russia, in China--that is even remotely comparable to our F-15 and our F-18 and there won't be, the CIA says, for 15 to 20 years. So what is the rush to judgment? A little more about the F-22 and its checkered history. We started out to buy over 600 F-22s, and the Air Force said, we will buy them at a certain such cost. It became apparent that they could not even begin to buy that many airplanes for those dollars, so they cut the number to 438. It turns out they could not buy 438 for that price, and Secretary Cohen, to his eternal credit, said this is the amount of money we are going to spend and no more. And so that took the number down to 339. Sixty-two billion dollars, and we put a cost cap for that amount in last year's Defense bill. Listen to this, that comes to $182 million for each F-22 we buy. That is roughly three times more than we have ever paid for a fighter plane. So what is next? Lockheed Martin and the Air Force say in November of 1994 that the F-22 will require 1,400 hours of testing before we start production. That sounded reasonable. Then in May of 1997 they say, no, we don t need to do 1,400 hours; 601 hours of testing will be adequate. And now guess what we are down to in this very bill we are debating. You see the figure on this chart: 183 hours. Mr. President, that comes out to only four percent of the four percent of the F-22's whole 4,300 hour flight test program. Four percent. Now, the Defense Science Board and every flight evaluator and testing expert will tell you that most of the complaints, most of the flaws in an airplane, will, indeed, show up when you test it between 10 and 20 percent of the number of hours that it should be tested. But here we are in February of 1988. In 1998, they said 183 hours. This bill that we are debating was crafted in May of this year. Bear that in mind. A lot of things have happened since then. Mr. President, the Air Force the other day--as a matter of fact, it wasn't the other day; it was yesterday--the Air Force sent a message to every Senator's office saying, ``Here is why you ought to oppose the Bumper's amendment.'' But they closed it out exactly the way I knew they would close it out: 25,000 jobs--mostly in Georgia and some other States. Mr. President, here is how much we tested other fighters before we made an initial purchase. The F-15 was tested for 975 hours before we bought the first one; the F-16 was tested 1,115 hours before we bought the first one; the F-18, 1,418 hours before we bought the first one; and the F-18E/F, the follow-on model, which really didn't need all that much testing, we tested for 779 hours. But do you know what else happened. During flight testing of the F-18E/F, they discovered that it had a problem. It was called ``wing drop.'' Now, if you listen to this illustration, you will know what you get into when you do this business of buying before you fly. They had to test-fly the F-18-E/F, they had to test-fly it almost 2,500 hours to cure one flaw in a time-tested airplane. We are spending $200 million a year on the B-1 bomber, and do you know why? Because we didn't test it. We were so hot to buy that bomber back during the cold war that we started buying the initial airplanes before we even tested them. We are spending over $200 million this year, and we will spend $198 million next year on it. And so what came next? The next thing that came was the B-2 bomber, and it is not fixed. And we are spending God knows how much money on it every year because we didn't test it before we bought it. What this bill does--I hope my colleagues will pay close attention to this--this bill does not keep the Air Force from buying what they call lot 1 of low rate initial production, two airplanes. We don't stop that with my amendment. We don't change the bill. They can go ahead and buy those two airplanes. But then there is $190 million in this bill that is fenced, it is to buy long-lead items for the next six airplanes. It says you cannot buy them until you have tested it at least 183 hours and the Secretary certifies a couple of things, then you can go ahead and start toward $1.5 billion worth of airplanes, after 183 hours of testing. I have a something here the Pogo Alert, put out by the Project on Government Oversight. It says: The contractors building the aircraft [referring to the F- 22] may be satisfied with a promise of future testing in order to get the program funded now and will welcome getting more money in the future to fix problems discovered too late. But the Government should not walk into such a situation knowingly. To avoid more problems with the F-22, the Government merely needs to follow its own rhetoric of adopting commercial best practices, and that means, in this case, testing before producing, not after. Once the waiver is issued by the Secretary of Defense, all bets are off. We are headed for a $1.5 billion purchase of six airplanes. And when we start running into trouble we will already be committed just as we were on the B-1 and the B-2. The Air Force says, ``We will test this airplane. We will get in the 183 hours before December.'' Would you like to know how many hours they have tested it so far? As of June 16, they have tested it 6 hours. And they say yes, but we are going to step that up to 15 hours a month. If they do, in December they will have about 95--95 hours of testing. My amendment says they ought to test this plane for 601 hours before the initial purchase of these six production airplanes is made. That is the amount the Air Force said they would do just last year. Why is it that we are in such a sweat to get this unbelievably expensive airplane built with not an enemy in sight, not anybody in the world with airplanes to even come close to the F-15s and the F-18s and the F-16s? Yet they want to go all out to start buying this airplane. And we know, we know to a certainty that we are going to regret it. The testing so far, incidentally, the 6 hours it has been tested, is on what they call a clean airplane: No armaments, no sidewinders, no SRAMs, no nothing-- just a clean airplane, 6 hours of testing. And when you start putting the armaments on it and in it, it takes on an entirely different aerodynamic. I get frustrated and too loud sometimes, because I cannot believe what we do. Do you know what the Air Force told the GAO in 1992? Listen to this. In 1992 they said: We don't have to rush anymore. The cold war is over. We can take our time in testing weapons in the future. We do not have to urge what we call concurrency. Concurrency is buying airplanes while you are testing them. You are buying airplanes on the come, betting on the come. You are betting that somehow or other, whatever problems crop up, they can be solved. That is called concurrency, and that is what the Air Force told the GAO, in 1992, that it was not going to do. It said, we are not going to use concurrency as an excuse to buy weapons in the future because we are not in that big of a hurry. Mr. President, I wish I could say that I thought Senators who were listening, and those on the floor would take a very sensible view toward testing an airplane before we buy it, particularly the most expensive fighter plane we have ever bought. But I am not hopeful. I have seen it happen too many times, planes being built in a lot of States with a lot of jobs. Nobody wants to be accused of being soft on defense. And they know to a certainty that the American public, by and large, will never know what happened--just as they don't know what happened in the case of the B-1 and the B-2. And their money will have been spent. Mr. President, it is the ``same old, same old.'' It is Lucy holding the ball for Charlie Brown and swearing she won't pull it out from under him this time. So it is a freebie. You can go ahead and vote against this amendment and be ironclad sure you will never pay at the polls. Nobody is going to say why did you spend that $62 billion to $100 billion on that F-22 without even testing it? They don't know about it, so you get a free ride. Mr. President, I retain the remainder of my time and yield the floor.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, how much time do I have remaining?

Mr. BUMPERS. I have 13 minutes.

Mr. BUMPERS. Yes.

Mr. BUMPERS. Pardon?

Mr. BUMPERS. I thank the distinguished Senator from Michigan for his very fine comments. I have a couple of questions. No. 1, if 601 hours was the right number of preproduction tests last year, why is 183 hours the right number this year? If you want to use apples and apples, you compare flight hours prior to award of a production contract. This chart shows the preproduction flight hours here. Those planes were tested this amount: 975 hours for the F-15; 1,115 hours for the F-16; and 1,418 hours for the F-18-- preproduction hours. And what are we going to do for the F-22? 183. And let me repeat, when you talk about how much more this is going to cost, $3 or $4 billion more, if we do not do this--you tell me, what if the Secretary does not wait? They still have to test 433 hours, and presumably you are going to get into the same cost figures of a $3 to $4 billion cost overrun. And while I am at it, let me ask the Air Force and Lockheed Martin this question: If you did not know, if they did not know that this committee, the Armed Services Committee--if they did not know that the required test hours were going to be cut from 600 to 183, why did they make those commitments that would generate a $3 to $4 billion cost overrun? Why are we responsible for the cost overrun that they have incurred--not us--they? Oh, Mr. President, it is so frustrating. I want to say this on the floor. Everyone knows I am leaving at the end of this year. I am not running for reelection. And, you know, it is no fun saying ``I told you so" when you are in a little country town down in Arkansas instead of on the Senate floor. I told this body years ago that when push came to shove the space station costs were going to start escalating. You listen to this. I told you years ago that the space station was going to cost well over $100 billion. And now it is almost up to $100 billion and rising. Since October 1, the cost overrun, just to build it--not deploy it--just to build it is 44 percent in 8 months. And this F-22 fighter, this airplane is going to cost this body and this country more headaches than you will ever dream of. And tonight is an opportunity to avoid it. Why do we insist on going headlong into the production of an airplane this expensive, this sophisticated, which requires even more testing because of the new sophisticated equipment it has on it? And it is stealthy, all of those things. So I will tell you tonight--and I will not be here to say ``I told you so''--you are making a fatal mistake. You will regret it. The cost of this airplane is going to be a lot more than $62 billion. When the Air Force said, ``We'll build it for $62 billion,'' Secretary Cohen said, ``OK, that's what we're going to build it for.'' They said, ``How many can you build?'' They said, ``Three hundred thirty-nine.'' So last year, courtesy of my good friend from Michigan, Senator Levin, and Senator Coats, and Senator McCain, we took the Air Force's word, and we put the total cost at $62 billion--$182 million each. And we hadn't anymore got it ink printed, the ink wasn't dry, before the Air Force says, ``I'm sorry, we can't do it. We have to lift that cap.'' You know something else? It will be lifted. It will be lifted. Nothing is ever permanent around here. How we deceive ourselves and get by with it. The only satisfaction I will get out of this evening is knowing that sometime in the not-too-distant future I will be proven correct. Would you buy an automobile that had been tested for 6 hours, or even 183 hours? You wouldn't buy a Jeep that had only been tested for 183 hours, but we are going to spend $100 billion on 339 airplanes. I yield the floor, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, today I am introducing legislation to designate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, as a National Historic Site. Central High School is perhaps the most well- known school in the nation, as a result of the high profile and pivotal role it played in the desegregation of public schools in America. I am pleased to be joined by Senator Hutchinson in sponsoring this legislation. In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark decision, Brown versus Board of Education, which held that the segregation of public schools was unconstitutional. The following year, in its Brown II decision, the Court ruled that integration of the public schools was the responsibility of local school districts, to be carried out ``with all deliberate speed.'' This set the stage for the eventual confrontation in Little Rock. Prior to the Brown decision, Central High was attended only by white students. Following the Court's decision, the Little Rock School Board initially made plans to comply with the decision in phases to be carried out over six years. However, by the time the district began to implement the decision in the fall of 1957, the political controversy had increased to the extent that only 9 black students decided to enroll at Central High, with approximately 1,900 white students. Those nine students later became known as the ``Little Rock Nine,'' and are an inspiration to America. Mr. President, earlier this Congress, Senator Mosely-Braun and I introduced legislation, S. 1283, to award the Congressional Gold Medal to those nine extraordinary individuals--Jean Brown Trickey, Carlotta Walls LaNier, Melba Patillo Beals, Terrance Roberts, Gloria Ray Karlmark, Thelma Mothershed Wair, Ernest Green, Elizabeth Eckford, and Jefferson Thomas. It is my strong desire that both S. 1283 and this legislation will be enacted into law in the remaining months of this Congress. These nine sons and daughters of Little Rock are proud symbols of the progress we have made and a solemn reminder of the progress we have yet to make. By the time the Little Rock Nine attempted to enter Central High in September of 1957, the issue of desegregation had polarized not only Little Rock, but the entire nation. The Governor of Arkansas, Orville Faubus, ordered the Arkansas National Guard to prevent the desegregation of Central High. Following several days of unrest, a Federal District Court in Little Rock issued an order preventing the National Guard from further obstructing desegregation efforts in Little Rock. Amid this period of intense feelings and acrimony, President Eisenhower issued an Executive Order which federalized the National Guard and deployed Federal troops to enforce the district court's order. Although several events of the following days were tense and often ugly, the eventual peaceful resolution that followed helped to ensure the successful implementation of the Brown decision, not only in Little Rock, but throughout the South. Last fall, on the 40th anniversary of the 1957 events, the attention of the nation was once again focused on Central High, and the Little Rock Nine once again entered through the school's main doors. However, this time those doors were held open by the President of the United States and the Governor of Arkansas. Establishment of the Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site will, for the first time, provide the National Park Service with the ability to interpret for all Americans the complete history of the desegregation of our public schools, certainly one of the most important social events in the history of our country. Let me hasten to add, Mr. President, that Central High will continue to be a functioning high school, managed by the Little Rock School District. Designation of the school as a National Historic Site will also complement the very successful interpretive activities already undertaken by the Central High Museum and Visitor Center. There is no question as to the national significance of Central High School. The school is included on the National Register of Historic Places, and was designated in 1982 as a National Historic Landmark by the Secretary of the Interior. There is strong support for this bill, both in Little Rock and with the entire Arkansas Congressional delegation. The City of Little Rock, the Little Rock School District, Central High Museum, Inc., area residents, and many other organizations and individuals in Little Rock have expressed support for this proposal. It is my hope to have a hearing scheduled for this bill in the very near future, with passage by the Senate shortly thereafter. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. I respectfully object.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I know my good friend Senator Inouye is here because he has a judgeship nomination he feels very strongly about. I have waited here for over an hour now, and I ask unanimous consent I be permitted to speak for 10 minutes on the Hutchinson amendment.