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OPENING STATEMENT BY UNDERSCRETARY GUDES

Mr. GUDES. I also want to thank this subcommittee for its longstanding support of our Nation's oceanic and atmospheric program. You have really supported us, and I would especially like to thank the outstanding professional staff, Christine Ryan, Gail Delbalo, Sally Chadbourne, Lucy Hand and others. It is really a pleasure for us to be able to work with the committee staff over the years.

Mr. Chairman, I would also like to recognize my management team that I have here today, my components of NOAA. I have Sonya Stewart as my Chief Financial Officer, Chief Administrative Officer; Jolene Lauria Sullens, who is my Deputy Chief Financial Officer and Budget Director; Margaret Davidson, who is the head of the Ocean Service; Bill Hogarth, who is the head of the Fisheries Service; John Jones, who is the Deputy head of the Weather Service; Louisa Koch, who is deputy head of NOAA Research back here; Greg Withee, who is the head of NOAA Satellites; and Admiral Fields, who is head of the Office of Marine Aviation Operations.

As you know, I am Acting Administrator and have been since January. I am actually the Deputy Under Secretary, the chief career position in the Agency. But we do operate NOAA as a team, and it really is a synergy where all the components actually provide for, I think, a better product and better servicing of the American people than all the single components by themselves.

For 2002, the NOAA budget totals $3.152 billion. That is a decrease of $61 million from the year before, from the appropriation year before. Those top line numbers don't necessarily tell the whole story. There are a lot of puts and takes going on. There is about $330 million in reductions; there are about $270 million in investments.

I think that it is fair to say, Mr. Chairman, that I have been working with the NOAA budget since the early 1980s, when I was at the Office of Management and Budget. I think this is the best NOAA budget submitted by any administration in terms of responding to the core mission, core values, the really important signs and services that the Agency needs to meet and to really keep us a premier oceanic and atmospheric agency in the future. I won't go through all elements of the actual investments. Let me just say the following: This budget first invests in people. It takes care of our mandatory costs-in the budget business, what we call "adjustments to base." This is my highest priority. This is the highest priority in the budget, adjustments to base, taking care of our people.

Number two, it invests in infrastructure, in the facilities, in the ships and the backup systems. And it is an area that NOAA in past years has not done a very good job in. We have not tended to look at what we need to do in terms of the infrastructure to maintain this agency. So I am very proud that this budget does provide some $34 million of increases to deal with this sort of-these issues.

The science and services I talked about, climate science and services, very important obviously, global warming, seasonal climate, MTS or Marine Transportation System, from the safe navigation— doing what we need to do in terms of our nation's ports and the maritime industry. This is NOAA's oldest mission. This goes back

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