161 



er Center — we call it the MITOC center now — out at post-graduate 

 school. And if that slows down, that's combat-readiness-related 

 stuff that I will be back again in another committee, in Congress- 

 man Weldon's committee, saying, you saved the money over here. 

 I need this stuff. And I will have to recreate it at added cost. 



So we are so interdependent, we need to make these discussions 

 a routine way of doing business, both in the Congress and among 

 us. 



Mr. ROEMER. Thank you. Admiral. 



Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 



Mr. Weldon. Thank you, Mr. Roemer, and that certainly is a les- 

 son that we need to hear in this Congress, that we don't need false 

 savings, that we need to know the long-term impact of decisions we 

 make. 



And with that, we'll turn to the gentleman from Maryland, Mr. 

 Gilchrist. 



Mr. Gilchrist. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 



Admiral Watkins, the suggestion by Congressman Saxton of a 

 National Institution of Environment or perhaps a National Insti- 

 tute of Ocean Studies or something like this, is that, in your mind, 

 something that's necessary as a congressionally- legislated entity? 



Can the Idnd of coordination and cooperation that we're discuss- 

 ing here take place without that? Is the study that you've given to 

 us here something that can happen without specific legislation to 

 create an entity? 



How is it best — or I might commit blasphemy here, I guess, and 

 suggest a specific congressional committee dealing with oceans and 

 the atmosphere, as a separate committee in the Congress. 



How best do we proceed on this? 



Admiral Watkins. Well, I think the very fact that we have 47 

 committees in both houses of Congress dealing with the oceans, we 

 have nine federal agencies who came up their own routes knowing 

 that the oceans were important to their missions, tells us that we 

 have the right debate going on here this morning. 



And I believe there are things that we can do right now. We 

 don't need legislation for you all to hold an annual hearing, by joint 

 committees of Congress. 



What we're trying to do is say, don't let it go. Don't let it go 

 again for 25 years, as we have before. Let's put what we're practic- 

 ing today into being and let's say that we agree that there should 

 be an ocean partnership act and that the Congress will be a mem- 

 ber of that partnership. 



We cannot do it alone. You can't chastise the Executive Branch 

 for not coming together if the Congress doesn't come together be- 

 cause if you pull out Mission to Planet Earth funding, for example, 

 for NASA, we all get impacted. It isn't just NASA. It's the rest of 

 us. 



If we don't give the right amount to the National Science Foun- 

 dation to do the kind of extramural research, it won't get done. 



And so, we can do these things without legislation that I'm talk- 

 ing about. I believe legislation is important to get the visibility and 

 to encourage your Senate counterpart to do the same thing. 



When we had the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, we had a 

 body of people for years who up in the Congress knew what they 



