[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 16] [House] [Page 23399] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]TECHNOLOGY AND AMERICA'S FUTURE The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Lampson) is recognized for 5 minutes. Mr. LAMPSON. Mr. Speaker, I am here this afternoon to say a few words about why research and technology is important to America. For me, it is a simple story. Technology gives people the tools to live better lives, beginning with the discovery of fire on a winter night somewhere back in history. Technology creates jobs, raises standards of living, and allows people to live longer and fuller lives. My home, in the Ninth District of Texas, has really three prime examples of the power of new technologies to spur growth and create opportunities: petroleum, space, and medicine. In my hometown of Beaumont, in 1901, an era began when oil drillers hit the Lucas Gusher in Spindletop. By the end of that year, Spindletop's production exceeded all the rest of the world combined. The technologies that unfolded in the following decade in the use of automobiles, aircraft, petroleum refining totally changed the shape of our world, making mobility a commonplace rather than a luxury for the wealthy, allowing average Americans to enjoy the personal freedom to travel, to work, to shop, just to have fun, for pleasure. Almost a hundred years later, technology continues to find new uses for our hydrocarbon resources and to make transportation more safe and more compatible with the environment. Beaumont and East Texas still have a major share of America's petroleum refining and petrochemical manufacturing capacity. And what keeps the industry a vigorous source of employment everyone recognizes is research and technological innovation. Energy, oil, and chemicals are increasingly international industries. They have to compete successfully with industries worldwide in the field of efficiency and innovation, and they need to find new ways to minimize their impact on the environment. The road to those goals is paved by research. A few miles southwest of Spindletop is the Johnson Space Center, one of the major centers of America's space program. As the Lucas Gusher celebrated the beginning of the 20th century, the International Space Station, managed by the Johnson Space Center, will mark the beginning of the 21st century. This is the largest space project in the history and a collaboration between the United States, Canada, the member states of the European Space Agency, Japan, Russia, and Brazil to build a laboratory in permanent orbit around the Earth. Where will this step lead us? Space station research and medicine and biomedical technologies will help open the door to new advances in health care, research, and physical sciences and engineering; will enable development of a new generation of materials for optical computing, technologies for increased efficiencies engines, and a host of other advances that we cannot even predict. The Space Station will be advancing knowledge in the basic sciences across the spectrum and providing opportunity for commercial research and development opportunity as well. And on the Space Station we will also be developing a whole spectrum of space technologies that will enable a tremendous expansion of our capabilities for commerce and exploration. The course of human space exploration is not set today, but I believe that humans will over the course of the next century make the trip to Mars if not a routine, then at least a regular, event. America should lead that chapter in the history of humanity. One of the things that we can predict about the 21st century is that our citizens will increasingly find themselves in competition with labor from around the world. This competition does not have to be a zero-sum game where they can get richer by making any neighbor poorer. The 21st century can be a win-win game if advances in research and technology give our workers the knowledge and the tools needed to continue to lead the growth of prosperity in the global economy. It is obvious to me that research is not a luxury. It is a necessity. We have to make the investments necessary to make sure that the economic opportunity made possible by technology-led growth are available to our children's generation and to make sure that we can maintain our standard of living and to improve our stewardship of the environment, to make sure that our longer lives are healthier, richer, and less expensive medically, to manage the continued growth of the world's population, and to open the universe to the continuing epic of human discovery. Finally, Mr. Speaker, I ask that as we proceed through the next few weeks to negotiate our final appropriations decisions for fiscal 2000 that we remember the importance of research and the importance of agencies like NASA, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health to our country's future. ____________________