CHARLES M. HARDIN 231 



My belief now is that we can no longer live with these lavish and 

 indiscriminate policies. We must re-examine the cost of heavy spend- 

 ing programs in natural resources, in agriculture, and elsewhere. We 

 must reassess these policies as they substantially affect our ability to 

 integrate our economy internationally. In addition, although some 

 economists appear to believe that we can substitute ourselves out of 

 nearly any natural resource shortage, we appear to need a much 

 sharper, and continuous, appraisal of the availability and use of criti- 

 cal resources. For these reasons a much more systematic and compar- 

 ative review and evaluation of natural resource and other policies is 

 required. 



At present the big natural resource programs secure their budgetary 

 millions, acquire their field administrations, cement their Congres- 

 sional friendships, and join hands with well-heeled interest groups 

 which have formed (often with their own assistance) around their 

 programs. Many internal struggles have occurred — Agriculture vs. 

 Interior, Army Engineers vs. Reclamation, Soil Conservation Service 

 vs. Tennessee Valley Authority — but such contests have been to con- 

 trol larger chunks of the budget rather than to whittle it down or, 

 more significantly in our present situation, to compel a comparative 

 evaluation of spending in different areas and for different purposes. 

 Indeed, the big programs in this area seem more and more to be 

 added together, escorted politely but firmly through the Bureau of the 

 Budget, and paraded by the genial Appropriations Committees to the 

 Treasury (with a courtesy call for the President's signature). These 

 programs may get knocked down a few millions occasionally, but they 

 are too powerful politically to have to undergo thorough comparative 

 examinations. In addition, I believe that support of the big-spending 

 natural resource programs is obtained by a series of deals which in- 

 volve restrictions on imports and subsidies for exports. I refer specifi- 

 cally to the quotas and restrictions, present or proposed, some of 

 them directly in the natural resource field (petroleum, lead and zinc) 

 and some of them outside the natural resource field proper like quotas 

 on Japanese textiles — but all of them, I think, knit together politically 

 in a series of logrolls which we can no longer safely endure. 



I conclude then that Gilbert White's proposed reform should logi- 

 cally be extended to include the comparative evaluation of all our 



