we will now proceed with the markup h r sixty sixty three was introduced by space and are not except committee chairman utah and i was pleased to be an original co sponsor of the legislation i was even more pleased that mr also joined as original co sponsors this is a bipartisan bill in every sense of the word and i want to thank them and their staff for their their productive and involvement in moving this legislation forward that constructive approach is reflected in their active participation in helping to craft the management that will be considered and just a while i am emphasizing that bipartisanship consensus we have on this bill because i think it's important that we send a strong message to the next administration whether it turns out to be a democratic or republican one that the congress believes that nasa is important and worthy of the nation's support h r sixty sixty three makes clear that nasa is relevant to the nation's innovative innovation agenda that it has a key role to play ensuring the future health of our nation's aviation system and that it is critical to the nation's efforts to better understand our climate and the changes facing the earth's system in addition h r sixty sixty three demonstrates that a properly structured human spaceflight and exploration program can provide dividends technologically scientifically and geopolitically and is worthy of the nation's investment in it yet h r sixty six three also demonstrates that with the applied to r and d agencies in the last years america competes act that is a reflection of the fact that nasa is activities have an important role to play in the nation's innovation agenda is also a reflection the fact that we need to ensure that nasa has sufficient resources for all of its important task and the nation is asking it to carry out and i believe that this bill does that just that there are many important provisions in the nath authorization act of two thousand and eight  including a special funding augmentation to help narrow the human spaceflight gap and the nation is facing after the retirement the shuttle just members have already from iraq themselves with the content of the legislation i would not take time now to restate those provisions instead i would just close by saying that i think h r sixty sixty three is a good bill that will help prepare nasa for a relevant productive future and i urge my colleagues to support it i now recognize mr hall to present his remarks jim acosta thank you for scheduling mark and as you say i'm proud to be an original co sponsor of this bill and i hope the members here today are going to consider adding their support to h r sixty sixty three is a one year bill it demonstrates congress commitment to maintain a strong and battle space program and well social services a signal to a new administration that nasa has deep support within this congress and i think that's important passage of this bill is very important for another reason  lapse the next presidential administration may interpret our failure to act as a sign of weakness for nasa and then in turn might tempt a new administration to divert agency resources i don't want that to happen i don't think any of us in this room want that to happen the bill before us today contains a number of important provisions that authorizes nineteen point two billion for nasa for nine and provides an additional one billion to excel or development of the new crew vehicle  international space station as well as adding a flight to take the alpha magnetic spectrometer to the s s as we originally committed to do some years ago they amassed was stricken from the shuttle manifest fall in the cloud be a tragedy but i believe given the large investment in resources will to make good on our original commitment to fly this expensive investment to the s s h r six hundred sixty three direct nasa to continue the important task of developing the constellation system which will provide our county our country with a modern and more robust and safer manned spaceflight capability that will enable our astronauts to fly out of low earth orbit an ability we haven't had since the retirement of apollo over thirty years ago and most of you're aware once the shuttle is retired at the end of this decade our country will have to buy a seat from the russians for as long as five years to assure a u s presence on the international space station our payment for rides on their spacecraft have not yet meant to go but it will be expensive and sadly we'll be making these parts is a time when nasa will be less off thousands of engineers and technicians from the shuttle program in an effort to minimize their reliance on the russians as i mentioned a moment ago this bill authorizes an additional one billion to speed up development of the new constellation system this additional investment is more than justified this bill also includes a number of provisions to encourage nasa working with the private sector to foster development of a domestic commercial cargo out capability primarily designed to take supplies to the space station in addition h r six hundred sixty three include language directing nasa to solicit for commercial crew launch capability turning the other parts of nasa h r six hundred sixty three embraces a number of recommendations that were put forward by witnesses from government industry and academia who testified in hearings before this committee and the space  h and activities and foster efficient technology transfer from nasa the federal agencies into the private sector and detect and mitigate the threat of the near thawed jacks and research and monitor the effects of space weather on satellites this list is not exhaustive but i want to mention these few examples to take this time to emphasize to all members of the breadth of this bill and how to improve upon many of nasa's activities and programs before closing i want to point out that during development of this bill the democratic staff and leadership have been very open and forthright sharing early drafts of this bill with our republican staff it's been a close and productive partnership i want to specially recognize and praise the hard work and others and mr chairman i thank you thank you mr concurred on is a real asset to our committee as we just have excellent staff on both sides also can concur with your statement this is a strong message of bipartisan gordon noted that this is a strong bill that has bipartisan support i want to take a moment to thank mr hall and mr feeney particular for their efforts on the legislation their support and thoughtful inputs made this a better bill and they have excellent staff members i'd like together a bill that will put nasa on track and keep it on track so i want to thank dick and pam whitney allen lee and devon bryant for their efforts of course so wendy adams and my congressional staff has been phenomenal as well we've received a lot of letters of endorsement including ones from the aerospace industries association the general aviation manufacturers association the american meteorological society the planetary society university space research association i e e e the national space society a nd asked me and the legislation is really a result of the testimony and that constructive input from many many witnesses outside experts and organizations and i'd like to thank all of them for their insights the guiding principle the legislation  nasa should be and i believe is an agency that can be a strong catalyst for dealing with important national concerns and that's why we've focused on measures to ensure that the nation's human exploration efforts will be carried out a manner that maximize our return on our national investment in it and that the international space station will be utilized as productively as possible and that's also why the bill focuses on building a strong earth sciences research and applications program as well as strengthening  which will be very critical to our nation's future aviation system i could go on it to some length about all the great features in the bill but i know we'd all like to proceed to the markup so let me put the rest of my remarks in the record and on both sides as has been mentioned appropriately have done a fantastic job what we've done is to lay out a bipartisan blueprint for sustaining a healthy and vigorous nasa during the next administration and the chairman gordon pointed out the importance of this bill the next  administration is going to look for a starting place in terms of space and nasa policy i think that we have laid out a great starting place no matter who the next president may be and i would note that apparently senator by colleague from florida senator nelson has had complimentary things to say about the bill that came out of the subcommittee we provide good stewardship for all enterprises iness portfolio earth and space sciences aeronautics and human spaceflight because i represent kennedy space center and i've solved congresswoman giffords there the other day she was a little bit more nervous than i was for inexplicable reasons i want to particularly note the unambiguous indorsement of america's human spaceflight program we've come a very long way since the loss of the shuttle columbia over five years ago this bill continues that progress by providing much needed stability in our strategy and architecture for human spaceflight here's an example of bipartisan leadership during a time of difficult challenges for the program the manager's amendment clutha section directing the white house office of science and technology policy to establish an interagency committee and study the issues raised by locating a commercial space launch range in close proximity to a federal launch range in order to have viable commercial launch operations in the united states effective coordination and cooperation must exist between potential commercial ranges and existing federal ranges this issue is of constant concern to florida space coast as advise with international competitors as a site for launching commercial payloads i didn't thank the talented accomplished staff on both sides of the aisle the tone and tenor of discussions and negotiations continue this committee's cooperative inclusive approach to dealing with the astronauts that would come to austin and from time to time and they would always tell us when we were kind of court and i'm you know about their husbands and one said don't call me unless my husband on television that manny's gone around and around the world without objection so ordered i recognize myself for five minutes to explain the minute i have what i believe is a straightforward amendment that makes a number of technical corrections of the bill clarify several of the existing provisions the bill and add some additional language that clarifies it t planetary science area that memet as additional language on support of the robotic mars sized mission as well as a sense of congress provision on the importance of the outer planets program and finally the memo includes two new provisions the first is a commercial launch knowledge and technology to the nation's small businesses we have worked closely with the minority in crafting this amendment and i appreciate their assistance and input i believe that this is a non controversial moment and i would urge my colleagues to support it is there further is definitely a strong and bipartisan piece of legislation and i commend mr you to all of mr feeney for working so closely together on this bill i think we can make it better and i actually have two amendments and let me describe the first one is this the first amendment would create would occur correct a misguided provision and that provision is section five twenty six of the energy independence and security act of two thousand and seven that prevents the federal government including nasa from developing and implement implementing alternative fuels from our own domestic sources this first amendment is very similar to a bipartisan amendment to the fiscal year two thousand and science committee will engage in a full and open debate on a clear difference of philosophies on energy policy that exists between the republicans on our democratic colleagues over the past five years nasa has seen an increase of almost four hundred percent in spending for jet fuel from four point five million dollars in fiscal year two thousand and three to eighteen point three million dollars in fiscal year two thousand and seven simply put the growth nasa has experience in fuel cost is simply out of control and it has therefore been actively researching alternative fuels to help reduce fuel costs not only for itself but also for other federal agencies and in particular for the department of defense it is estimated that part of the defense mainly through the air force utilizes four hundred eighty thousand gallons of refined petroleum products every day four hundred eighty thousand gallons a day and because of the rising cost of fuel it's estimated that in the fiscal year zero eight the additional cost to the department of defense under the federal government will be nine billion dollars now that's just the increased costs mr chairman nasser has historically been on the cutting edge of innovation numerous contributions to technologies that we use on a daily basis in the united states we all know about that currently nasa has partnering with the air force and is already aggressively conducting research to convert domestic energy sources such as colder liquid natural gas bio mass and oil shale it's estimated that in the west for five states in the west the amount of oil shale which is i'm not that familiar with the product but it's not a liquid it's kind of a c me solid but if we utilize that and converted it into a petroleum product it could produce something like three million additional i'm sorry three trillion additional barrels of oil for use by the federal government three trillion now to put it in perspective when the first oil well was drilled in pennsylvania back in the late eighteenth hundreds since that time the whole world has used about one trillion barrels of petroleum and this oil shale has a capacity domestic right here in river city if you will of producing three trillion additional barrels of petroleum and as a site nasa is currently partnered with air force to conduct in the research to make these conversions into cleaner and more economically alternative to traditional jet fuel we are the prices of course rising at a time when we could best utilize the research for emerging technologies for alternative fuels where section five twenty six the democratic majority has really affected really stymied innovation at nasa that could potentially help us reduce our dependence on foreign oil it basically says and section five twenty six that the federal government cannot utilize any of these of the sources if it results in any increased carbon footprint now i'm not talking about tonnage of c o two i'm talking about maybe maybe even an  more and when we have to balance and consider the amount of money that we're spending and what we're going through and what the american public is going through in this time to not put aside that mister added policy so that our federal government  don't understand maybe he could explain to us why this amendment would not be germane where as i just pointed out in my discussion nasa is currently doing research on utilizing these alternative domestic sources and has a partnership with the department of defense so that they're not duplicating their research efforts and sharing that information and is just on the verge probably of being able to utilize that because this amendment would change the bill to the point that some of the committee then would would go would have some jurisdiction over it and it would have to be referred to the other committee that i mentioned but to me not why does that mean it's non germane just because some of the committee may have to look at it and have jurisdiction we're not exactly killing ourselves mr chairman up here getting things done we spent a lot of time on the suspension bills and  referral so be it if we make it a much about a bill and save our country from going down the t yours is recognized thank you mr chairman i speak against the point of order and in favor of the amendment for perhaps some of different reasons but as you know i fought very hard over the years to maintain this jurisdiction of this committee over various areas and this problem that we're trying to correct here is a good example of what happens when committees that don't understand the science and don't have jurisdiction over nasa for example pass regulations that just don't make sense and the reason this doesn't make sense in the case of space travel is that the primary requirement for fuel to be used for space or for aviation is to have a high energy density fuel in other words a lot of energy compared to the weight because with flying or space travel weight means everything you want to keep the as low as possible but you need the maximum energy so you want to buy fuels or find fuels or develop tools that have the maximum energy density in other words the largest amount of energy available for the amount of of weight of the fuel you're carrying and i see the section five twenty six basically saying oh we don't care about that we're just worried about the carbon footprint well i'm worried about the carbon footprint too i want to smallest possible carbon foot or or tire tread or paper trail through space whatever you want to call it but point is simply what nasa and all the aviation and space researchers decide what is the best  sized energy density for the minimum carbon footprint in other words you have to balance two things energy density and footprint and not put everything on the footprint itself so i think this section five twenty six is just pure nonsense it should be left up to this committee and to the scientific community to try to work out this particular problem and by having another committee step in which is doing and doesn't understand the science we end up with this problem so i respect the parliamentarian and but there's a problem here that has to be addressed the problem arises because once again a committee outside of science committee tackled the scientific issue and messed up on school i think they had a four corners of the page ruling that you look at anything from everything that's within those four corners of the page and you had legal reasons and then you had equitable reasons and sometimes like with legal and and i think that's what the professor here saying that this amendment simple and yet it addresses a problem it's created by an earlier law that hamstrings our federal energy independence for americans and actually takes options off the table by for increasing the production of number of domestic energy resources section five twenty six is one of the many sections that reduces options for americans this section prohibits another biofuels and some of us agree with that part but i don't agree with others but considering the fact that americans are burdened with skyrocketing fuel costs i think their nation continues to rely on foreign sources of energy well to be looking for all and using all includes nasa nasa purchased eighteen point three million dollars a jet fuel just last year and callous more to power their automobile fleet and manufacturing capabilities and what i would consider the fact that our nation's own energy crisis created and part by the lack of domestic production of resources this amendment would allow the purchases of new domestic resources and simply make sense out think it's equitable if you take the equity position and when you should search and make a ruling on the legal  well i thank the distinguished ranking member for yielding and to be much quicker than five minutes or even five seconds i would caution the chair to not to sustain the point of order that has been made by the gentleman from washington state this bill deals with nasa authorization nasa offers a largely is what nasa procure and how it it and if we accept the argument that the gentleman from washington state has raised then this entire bill would probably be in the jurisdiction of the committee on government reform and oversight that would be a terrible mistake during my tenure as chair of this committee ten years ago we had some major tussles jurisdictional issues and it was largely with the government reform and oversight committee and we were able to win most of those arguments the way the house rules are written the waxman committee can stick its nose into practically everything if we do not stand up and fight for our jurisdiction knows of that camel will be under our tent and before we know it the entire camel will be there and it will be our committee that ends up being irrelevant i would just assume and have that committee be made irrelevant but that will require overruling of the point of order that the gentleman from washington state has answered thank you the chair compared to really point of order sustained amendment in question a man's provision in an unrelated act which has no relation to the subject it was giving us a little bit of history lesson it's for many many many years it has been the tradition and custom of this committee that when the chairman sends out a notice saying amendments or accepted the chairman also says that reserves the right not to accept any amendment that has not been present within twenty four hours there's a reason for that the reason is we've got a responsibility to put a good bill on the floor and these to be vetted this is not subcommittee this is a full committee i mean you know we did not get this amendment until nine thirty last night and if you were looking for a conspiracy you might say it was way too late so that we couldn't get to the parliamentarians and ask about it there was you know if this was so important could be brought at the subcommittee level it could involve more than twenty four hours i don't think that anyone thinks that there hasn't been a lack of or there's a lack of cooperation collaboration and so you know not even having read this bill  really does make me feel uncomfortable in an honest situation to put something on the floor that hasn't been vetted it's not necessarily the concept but it was written we just don't know so again i think there is a certainly there is a significant parliamentary position here and there is a substantive position and i would say to dr gingrey i would suggest he go to the subcommittee i mean rather to the rules committee and i will not object when he does that  by mr rothman ask for five minutes to explain his amendment mr chairman thank you well we're going to make a second attempt here my colleagues in the second amendment that i'm offering does address the very same issue that the previous amendment did but it attempts to correct it in a different way you've heard my explanation in regard to wanting to strike and repeal section five twenty six of the energy independence and security act of two thousand and seven the reasons for that  count and i heard that two thousand and fourteen vote so now i want to try to approach this in a more limited manner but i think one that hopefully our colleagues can accept because i believe that this amendment provides a good compromise that would tremendously benefit nasa this amendment would allow the nasa administrator to use his discretion to provide a waiver to the agency to make you an example from the harmful visions of section five twenty six just like the other men that i offered a charge sixty six three this amendment is very similar to one offered by mr bishop of utah and the fiscal year two thousand and nine national defense authorization  unfortunately that amendment was also not made in order by the rules committee again i believe that this is also a commonsense amendment that will help us get on the path to correcting harmful energy policies by granting nasa a waiver and we're not talking about the rest of the federal government we're not even talking about the department of defense we're just talking about this agency allowing the administrator a waiver from section five twenty six in his discretion i believe that it would allow the agency to continue developing technologies that utilize the resources that we have here in the united states and we've talked about those oil sh sand tar coal to liquid and we and we can do it and nasa is proving that it can be done in an environmentally safe fashion so that we can reduce our dependence on foreign sources of energy and at the same  time pay attention to our environment in make sure that we don't ignore that well i hope all my colleagues on the committee support this support my important amendment it serves as a compromise i think i favor a compromise before but this one and this one in spades i mean we're talking about nasa now we're not talking about the agencies of the federal government and it is nassau that's doing most of the research currently ongoing sharing that research with department of defense as i stated in regard to how you can take these this seed corn if you will all shale and coal to liquid and turn them into fuel and this is domestic fuel that we have right here in river city and as i pointed out up to three trillion gallons but then surely all of our own source of energy that would would would be so much much cheaper  goodness gracious now and billion dollars increase cost in two thousand and eight because of what we have to pay to these foreign sources of petroleum you just think about the savings and what we could do with that in regard to americans a time when we really ought to be expanding those resources and they need to expand resources is certain not a foreign concept to this administration it's not a republican wish or a democratic wish it's an american way ssion something we have to do in fact the very agency th were discussing today nasa is currently engaged in groundbreaking research on many of the fields that this ill conceived section prohibits federal agencies from parts and then as i look at the amendment and once again for the for the good  the it shouldn't surprise in you know it's an agency it's led the way the future by leading a man to the moon and return him safely to earth which has just last week softly landed a probe on mars to explore the red plan would be again be laid in a way to energy independence this is an energy thrust in this amendment simple it simply says administrator maybe it doesn't say shall shall is not in this amendment anymore he may waive the prohibition and down to be more definite and his fellow discretion i just think it's a good amendment and i hope that the chairman will give us a good support in his wisdom and qualify seven of rule sixteen and once again let me point out that this amendment was not not received until nine thirty three last night when like most of you i had left the office and i happen to be in bed with a sinus infection  you where is your own business and i would also again state that dr gingrey has the right and privilege of being able to go the rules committee and for this to be heard on the floor in the appropriate mr smith of nebraska mr smith the nebraska votes no mr brown are there any members whose vote was not recorded if not the clerk will report the  as amended to the house for the recommendation of the bill is amended to pass for the more staff to be instructed to prepare the legislative report and make necessary technical and conform and changes and that the chairman take all necessary steps to bring the bill before the house members will have two subsequent counter days in which to submit supplemental minority or additional views on the measure ending monday june ninth at nine am i move pursuant to clause one of rule twenty two of the rules the house of representatives that the committee authorize