Mr. WU. Again, on behalf of my good friend and colleague, Mr. DeFazio, I am presenting this amendment.
When the President announced his new vision for the Nation's space exploration program on January 14, 2004, he proposed a new human exploration vehicle to return to the Moon by 2020 and to leverage these lunar efforts to send a human mission to Mars.
After Mr. Bush unveiled his plan in 2004, a congressional subcommittee requested that the Congressional Budget Office perform a budgetary analysis of NASA's New Vision For Space Exploration, as this program was titled. The report was released in September of 2004 and concluded that NASA's long-term projections only included a 2 percent increase for inflation.
NASA's budget has undergone radical changes since the President's vision was announced in 2004. NASA's budget requests for aeronautics has been reduced by over $200 million. NASA's budget requests for science programs, including climate research, have been reduced by over $300 million. In stark contrast during the same period, overall funding requests for NASA have increased by over $2 billion.
Since the President first proposed his new ``vision for space exploration,'' we have spent more than $600 billion in Iraq, over $120 billion on Hurricane Katrina, and the Federal deficit has grown by over $2.4 trillion.
Mr. DeFazio's amendment will direct the Congressional Budget Office to update its 2004 budgetary analysis of the President's plan. This makes fiscal sense. It will give us a more complete picture of the budgetary hurdles the project will face and a more accurate assessment of its long-term costs.
[Time: 17:00]
Congress needs to continue to analyze the project as it moves forward and be mindful of its effect on other important NASA programs. If anyone claims that they believe that the report will be duplicative of previous GAO reports, the fact is that GAO hasn't done a true cost estimate of the program, but, rather, done risk assessments of the program. Budget and cost estimate analysis is something that the Congressional Budget Office usually handles, not the Government Accountability Office.
The GAO has done some high level budget analysis, but CBO will be able to give a much more detailed report. On Mr. DeFazio's behalf, I urge adoption of his amendment, and reserve the balance of my time.
