From the President’s Office – 7/7/2011
Filed under: About,From The President's Office,News & Resources
I hope you all had an enjoyable holiday weekend. Summer has officially kicked into high gear here in Washington. Today, the President met with Congressional leaders to try to hammer out a deal to raise the debt-limit. Meanwhile, House Republicans have been proposing significant cuts in spending through the annual appropriations bills for 2012. This week, bills moved through the House Appropriations Subcommittees, which would cut EPA by 18 percent relative to 2011, including steep cuts to climate change programs. Another spending bill would cut $100 million from the NOAA budget ($1 billion below the President’s request); cut $1.6 billion from NASA; and flat-fund NSF ($907 million below the President’s request). While the Senate has yet to release its version of these measures, it is safe to say that this difficult fiscal environment continues to get tougher, suggesting that we have to be even more diligent in being sure that ocean science research is on their front burner.
Earlier this month, the National Ocean Council (NOC) released their Strategic Action Plan (SAP) for the National Ocean Policy Full Content Outlines for public review. Over the past few weeks, Ocean Leadership’s policy team has worked with representatives from our member institutions to develop comprehensive comments on these outlines, which are now available on our web site. To read them in full, click here.
Many countries in Europe are also interested in creating a unified European Ocean Policy. I spent the end of last week in Hamburg, Germany with a number of representatives from various European entities, including the European Union, discussing Ocean Leadership’s role in providing the science requirements for the U.S. National Ocean Policy. The concept of using a Global Ocean Observing system was presented as a way to further U.S./European collaboration on the issue. As you might imagine, this will be a continuing dialogue so I will be sure to keep you up to date on further deliberations and progress.
Have a great weekend. Summer is in full swing!
Bob
