— A political effort to remove space shuttle Discovery from the Smithsonian and place it on display in Texas encountered some pushback on Thursday (July 10), as a senator questioned the expense of carrying out what he described as a theft.

"This is not a transfer. It's a heist," said Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois during a budget markup hearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee. "A heist by Texas because they lost a competition 12 years ago."

In April, Senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, both representing Texas, introduced the "Bring the Space Shuttle Home Act" that called for Discovery to be relocated from the National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in northern Virginia and displayed at Space Center Houston. They then inserted a provision into the Senate version of the "One Big Beautiful Bill," which to fall within Senate rules was more vaguely worded but was meant to achieve the same goal.

That bill was enacted on July 4, when President Donald Trump signed it into law.

"I am glad to see this pass as part of the Senate's One Big Beautiful Bill and look forward to welcoming Discovery to Houston and righting this egregious wrong," said Cornyn in a statement. "Houston has long been the cornerstone of our nation's human space exploration program, and it's long overdue for Space City to receive the recognition it deserves by bringing Space Shuttle Discovery home."

That might have been the end of it, were it not for two concerns raised by Durbin on Thursday.

"In the reconciliation bill, Texas entered $85 million to move the space shuttle from the National Air and Space Museum in Chantilly, Virginia to Texas. Eighty-five million dollars sounds like a lot of money, but it is not nearly what's necessary for this to be accomplished."

Citing research by NASA and the Smithsonian, Durbin said that the total was closer to $305 million and that did not include the estimated $178 million needed to build a facility to house and display Discovery once in Houston.

Further, it was not clear if Congress even has the right to remove an artifact, let along a space shuttle, from the Smithsonian's collection. The Washington, D.C. institution, which serves as a trust instrumentality of the United States, maintains that it owns Discovery. The paperwork signed by NASA in 2012 transferred "all rights, interest, title and ownership" for the spacecraft to the Smithsonian.

"This will be the first time ever in the history of the Smithsonian someone has taken one of their displays and forcibly taken possession of it. What are we doing here? They don't have the right in Texas to claim this," said Durbin.

Houston was not the only city miss out on displaying a retired space shuttle. In 2011, Durbin and fellow Illinois Senator Mark Kirk appealed to NASA to exhibit one of the winged spacecraft at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. The agency ultimately decided to award the shuttles to the National Air and Space Museum, the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida and the California Science Center in Los Angeles.

A prototype orbiter that was exhibited where Discovery is now was transferred to the Intrepid Museum in New York City.

To be able to bring up his points at Thursday's hearing, Durbin introduced the "Houston, We Have a Problem" amendment to "prohibit the use of funds to transfer a decommissioned space shuttle from one location to another location."

He then withdrew the amendment after having voiced his objections.

"I think we're dealing with something called waste. Eighty-five million dollars worth of waste. I know that this is a controversial issue, and I know that there are other agencies, Smithsonian, NASA, and others that are interested in this issue, I'm going to withdraw this amendment, but I'm going to ask my colleagues be honest about it," said Durbin. "I hope that we think about this long and hard."