from the fiscal year 1955 through the fiscal 

 year 1961. 77 Senator McGee charged at that 

 time that Congress "found it necessary to cor- 

 rect slashes made by the Bureau of the Budget 

 which, in fact, have eroded the high principle 

 to which this administration has given lipserv- 

 ice." Not mincing words, he argued that the 

 "administration has sabotaged its own multi- 

 ple use program." On the basis of a 12-year 

 program projection by "Forest Service ex- 

 perts in our Government," McGee stated that 

 "one-eyed bookkeepers" in the Bureau of the 

 Budget were the culprits behind a "story of 

 default on a responsibility; of a failure to 

 measure up to words with deeds." 



A charge very similar to that made by 

 McGee came ten years later from the chair- 

 woman of the Subcommittee on Department 

 of Interior and Related Agencies, Julia 

 Hansen. She stated, "I have a suspicion that 

 when the Forest Service budget is reviewed by 

 the Office of Management and Budget, too 

 many people assume that the entire purpose 

 of the Forest Service is only in the timber 

 cutting area and this is not true." 78 



Although the data presented here tend to 

 verify such charges, an even more important 

 area of concern is pinpointed. Each of the 

 three administrative levels above the Forest 

 Service which handle the agency's request may 

 be expected to make alterations in the actual 

 size of the pie. This is in line with their re- 

 sponsibility to coordinate and integrate the 

 requests from many such agencies which come 

 under their purview. It is their job to see that 

 the relative priorities among agencies are estab- 

 lished and maintained. Thus the Department 

 of Agriculture, having weighed the facts pre- 

 sented to it, must slice its own pie. 



While this is taking place, the other 

 cabinet-level departments are performing simi- 

 lar budget studies. These are all forwarded to 

 the Office of Management and Budget, where 



11 Congressional Record, 86th Congr., 2d Sess. 

 (Vol. 106, Part 9), p. 12079-12083. The data, up- 

 dated to 1972, appear in the Appendix. 



78 U.S. Congress, House, Department of Interior 

 and Related Agencies Appropriations for 1972, 92d 

 Congr., 1st Sess., Hearings, Part 6, p. 293. Mrs. 

 Hansen also mentioned problems associated with the 

 impoundment of funds previously appropriated (see 

 p. 293, 409). 



the President's budget is established. For the 

 most part, this office aims to adjust the vari- 

 ous Department level requests in view of the 

 priorities given to it by the current adminis- 

 tration. Final action is then forwarded to the 

 Congress. It should be noted that by the sec- 

 ond and third stages of the budget process the 

 major task is to allocate slices of the pie to 

 agencies or departments, not to programs, 

 functional activities, and projects. Unless the 

 higher levels are ready to analyze the costs 

 and benefits of project level allocations, they 

 must accept as valid the relative allocations 

 presented by the agency. If they go beyond 

 altering the size of the agency slice by read- 

 justing allocations among, say, .the resources 

 of the FOREST, they should be prepared to 

 justify this action on technical grounds, just 

 as the agency itself should be. 



This study has maintained that there is evi- 

 dence to suggest that the Forest Service has 

 failed to convince that its budget requests are 

 in any way tied to an optimal goal-oriented 

 management plan. Just as important, how- 

 ever, is the evidence that the three higher 

 branches of government have failed to accept 

 the requests of the agency as valid. With re- 

 spect to sustained-yield management, in fact, 

 they have made it difficult or impossible for 

 the Forest Service to fulfill the legal require- 

 ment. Timber cutting and reforestation and 

 stand improvement are complementary activi- 

 ties (fig. 13). Agency critics have angrily 

 charged that sustained yield principles have 

 been ignored. The allowable cut calculations 

 simply were not in line with provisions for 

 regeneration of cutover sites. This was partly 

 due to the budgetary process. The Forest 

 Service has committed itself to increasing tim- 

 ber harvest significantly by 1980. Whether 

 this will be possible with reference to the legal 

 mandate for sustained yield, time will tell. At 

 this time, however, it appears that the past 

 limitations on timber growing efforts may 

 have diminished the opportunity to meet the 

 commitment. 



The relation of Forest Service requests to 

 higher level budgets is shown in figure 14. 

 Over the 18-year period covered by the data 

 presented, the Department of Agriculture sup- 

 ported agency requests for Timber sales ad- 



61 



