Engineer Memoirs
Q:
Yes. And then in the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and I guess you were
involved with that office, too, right?
A:
I didn't have too much to do with that, not in the Carter era.
Q:
Well, Dick Curl just oozed contempt when he talked about the Carter White House.
A:
This was an example. We offered the alternative that if Carter wanted to stop these
projects, the thing for him to do was to launch a crash study, aimed at the next year's
budget. Congress had already acted on the budget for 1977, and we were spending the
money. We told the President in that meeting in the White House on the 17th of
February that he ought to have a study that would begin right then, and carry through
to the summer--
Q:
Which is what you were doing, in a way.
A:
Yes. But the point is, rather than trying to stop the projects, he should have done that,
and then his budget recommendations for 1978 should have been based upon the results
of this study. If he wanted to recommend in that budget stopping the projects, fine. But
to do it as he did wouldn't work, which it didn't.
Congress went ahead and appropriated money for most of the projects for fiscal year
1978. A few, like the Meramec Dam in Missouri, were lost. That was in
[Representative Richard H.] Ichord's district, and he had been a strong supporter, but
as the result of all this public support fell away. Ichord concluded that the public was
no longer in favor of this dam, and we shut it down.
Q:
And that, of course, is a process that Carter could have encouraged by studying it for
a year, developing public support--
A:
I think it would have worked much better for him, and it wouldn't have poisoned his
relations up on the Hill. Contrast this with the Reagan administration. Reagan really
used his first year in office to get a coalition going in Congress to pass the most
dramatic and far-reaching legislation of perhaps his entire presidency--a whole
turnaround on the budget.
He put together a coalition. He got them to redirect the budget, to reduce some areas
and increase others. He cultivated the Congress and got this across. President Carter,
with this water project thing, totally destroyed his relations with Congress
Q:
Right at the outset.
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