NATIONAL OCEANOGRAPHIC PROGRAM LEGISLATION 143 



and necessary. I would hope that we could get leaders in government, 

 in the industry, and in science to do this job and do it quickly because 

 I don't tliink we have much time. 



It should not take longer than 6 months. In the meantime, it would 

 seem to me that all of the doubts and the differences of opinion about 

 national policy, about budget, about organization, ought to be resolved 

 here in the Congress as rapidly as possible. 



I don't think that we ought to slack our interest or our determination 

 while we are trying to decide what our problems are and what the 

 mechanics of organization are going to be. 



It has been gratifying, INIr. Chairman, that the executive branch and 

 the Congress have almost always been in agreement about the impor- 

 tance of the goals of oceanogTaphy, even though we have had a great 

 difference of opinion as to how best to achieve them. 



We have had increased appropriations. We have had healthy 

 growth. We have had increases in our equipment, modernization, new 

 techniques, strengthened our educational and manpower base, and we 

 have made quite an auspicious start. ^Vliat we are all talking about 

 now is the new spirit, new direction of a program that we all concede 

 is immensely important and valuable to the country for many i-easons. 



Right now we are $50 million behind schedule in our 10-year pro- 

 gram of oceanography as laid down by the Federal Council, and we 

 can't maintain world leadership in an area in which the Soviet compe- 

 tition is so significant with that kind of performance. But it is not the 

 uncertainties of the funding that alarms me the most. 



The extensive interest by the 89th Congress reflects this concern, 

 for, nothwithstanding the good intentions of the executive branch to 

 support this program, it has been obviously difficult to maintain 

 priority attention and assignment of manpower and funds in the face 

 of competition for other scientific programs in the national interest. 



In the absence of any formal mandate from the Congress that the 

 President could construe as a consensus by the American people that 

 this field deserves the attention that has been focused on outer space, 

 and in the absence of any single agency having identifiable responsi- 

 bilty for this program as is true in space exploration, some additional 

 steps are essential. 



We need a program compatible both with this Nation's role as a 

 world leader and with the opportunities which the oceans offer in 

 maintaining our welfare and our security. 



We have taken such steps in connection with the Nation's space 

 program, its atomic energy program, its water resources ; but we have 

 not succeeded in developing a similar charter for our activities in the 

 oceans. 



The very diversity of purposes makes impracticable the reorganiza- 

 tion of all these functions in a single operating agency, in addition to 

 which you have all of the agencies fighting this, and without a clear- 

 cut decision, it seems to me," by the President which would direct the 

 agencies otherwise and because of the differences of opinion that exist 

 with respect to the military, the commercial, the scientific, and the 

 industrial people, I don't see from a practical standpoint how you are 

 going to ram through tlie establishment of an independent agency, as 

 desirable as that might be from an organizational standpoint,"a budget 

 standpoint, and in the establishment of na.tional goals. 



