OCEANOGRAPHY 1961— PHASE 3 225 



Professor Lewis. The problems of taking the fragmented agency 

 programs and welding them into one comprehensive balanced pro- 

 gram are very difficult ; and the progi*ams that are carried out neces- 

 sarily evolve from the budget process. There simply is no time pro- 

 vided in the budget process for a committee such as the one now ex- 

 isting on an administrative basis to provide effective guidance in that 

 budget process for the different facets of the programs that are 

 presented separately to different organizations within their own de- 

 partments, separately to different organizations within the Bureau of 

 the Budget, and separately to different subcommittees within the Ap- 

 propriations Committee of the Congress, 



Mr. DiNGELL. Furthermore, you would lose continuity between 

 meetings. Unless you have an adequate staff, you loss continuity. 



Professor Lewis. That is correct, sir. 



Mr. Dingell. You mentioned on page 5 the weaknesses of this in- 

 terdepartmental committee. The thrust of your comment, at the end 

 of your first paragraph and at the end of your second paragraph, is 

 that not infrequently these interdepartmental committees get to be 

 nothing more or less than debating societies, with interminable dis- 

 cussions that boil down into one of these "Who's going to bell the 

 cat ?" sort of operations. 



Do you think that is sufficient justification for this committee to 

 put additional safeguards in the bill against this, and, if so, what 

 can we do by way of guaranteeing that this will not develop into a 

 high class debating society ? 



Professor Lewis. I think that these additional safeguards are es- 

 sential if the Council you have in mind in this legislation is to func- 

 tion in the manner that you expect it to. And the safeguards that I 

 would suggest are, first of all, to consider dropping the membership 

 level one echelon, because at the assistant secretarial level there is more 

 possibility of finding an individual who is knowledgeable of the sub- 

 ject matter. 



I think the more knowledgeable an individual can be on the Council, 

 the more effective the Council operations can be. 



Mr. Dingell. Of course, you are going to have an awful lot of 

 irritated bureaucrats, if you do that. 



Professor Lewis. Would you have that, sir, if the department head 

 were permitted to make his own choice, his own designation ? 



Mr. Dingell. Of course, you have the problem, too, that the lower 

 you get in the echelon, the more difficulty there is in achieving deci- 

 sion, because it has to be cleared up and down. 



Professor Lewis. Yes, sir. And that is why I suggest that if you 

 do consider dropping the membership by departmental selection one 

 echelon, you provide that the members of the Council be in a position 

 in which they have been confirmed by the Senate; or, lacking that, 

 that the names be submitted to the Senate for confirmation. 



I think that restriction would provide adequately for an authorita- 

 tive level for the Council. 



Even if you do that, I think it is most important that the Council 

 have a staff, and I think also that it is important that the Council have 

 some resources of is own which it can use to round out the program 

 that evolves in the agency. 



