Way. Whereas the house of representatives may have about 40 or 50 members that are predominantly Food Production represents Food Production districts. Every United States senator represents at least some Food Production. That includes from the smallest states of rhode island and delaware to, of course, the largest states. And historically, those interests were dominated from people by the midwest and the heartland states. So illinois, indiana, missouri, my own state of kansas. And the midwest, up through the dakotas. And states in the south where you had members of congress and especially members of the United States who were elected forever. They accumulated great amounts of power, and they were able to influence the political process rather significantly so the states of mississippi, which was one state that had accumulated a large amount of power over the years. But all of the southern states, georgia, south carolina, north carolina, called the southern crops had very, very powerful
Today, particularly the republican delegation and every thursday, we have lunch together. Talk about whats good for texas. But what was always a thing that we always looked forward to, we couldnt wait until ralph got there so that we could ralph could share a funny story. And you know, one of the things that ill miss most about ralph is those times when hed be on the floor or he would be at lunch, sharing those stories. Now one of the things about ralph is that as he got older, he got wiser. And in fact he, got so wise, in 2004, he realized he needed to be a part of the Republican Party and so he switched from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party. We were so glad to welcome him to that. So as i said, its been an honor and a privilege, ralph, to be part of your team on the science, space and technology committee. Its been a great honor to be one of your colleagues, but more importantly, ralph, we want to thank you for your friendship and kinship and most importantly your service
Carl levin and representative ralph hall. This thanksgiving week cspan is featuring interviews from retiring members of congress. Watch the interviews through thursday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern. Much as weve accomplished in 36 years i dont want to look back at that so much as to look forward to the next couple of months. In the next couple of months theres a couple of things i would like to do. One is to get my Defense Authorization bill passed. This is an annual effort, a major effort involving large amounts of staff. I would also want to finish up some work on the permanent subcommittee on investigations, looking at some gimmicks which are used to avoid taxes. Ive been a member of congress for 34 years and, you know, to finally get beat, if i was a manager for a baseball or Football Team and i had a 341 i would be in the hall of fame. So it doesnt bother me. Really it done bother me to get beat because i wasnt set on going but i had 18 cochairmen who were chairmen in my district that sup
Reserves so they can make a cash investment in a Capital Infrastructure to build a city hall or to do Something Like that and also to keep the bond rating agencies happy, to demonstrate that they are good stewards of the fiscal resources. So if you noticed the trend over time, it was much less than what we are now at about 22 of expenditures. Some 25 or 30 years ago it was much less. What cities have done over the last 25 and 30 years is theyve realized several things. One, that you cant predict the future as we all witnessed this last winter when salt reserves for at least the northern cities and some southern as well ran out very early and they had to dig into their reserves to buy more salt and snowplowing services. So preparing for these unexpected emergencies is one of the reasons that the reserves tend to grow over time. The other is that between the time that we started monitoring ending balances in the general fund to the present is that the federal government has become a much
Are entering the most risky phases of development. There are still technical hurdles to overcome. Particularly with the orion spacecraft which is addressing challenges with the parachute system and heat shield among others. There is also considerable development and testing ahead for orion in terms of the human support systems. Meanwhile, sos is continuing to pursue the earlier launch dates of december 2017. While nasas urgency is understandable, the schedule for achieving the earlier date mostly with respect to the core stage is very aggressive. Theres little room to address problems. Moreover, it does not appear that orion and the ground system can achieve the earlier date. And the longterm we have concerns about the cost estimating for human Space Exploration programs. Nasas only produce estimates for sos and ground system through the first flight test and orion through the second flight test. There is still Significant Development ahead for sos after the first flight and significan