Congressional Criticism

While some in Congress, such as Senator William Fulbright (D-AK), chair­man of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, received the presi­dent’s proposal positively, many members questioned whether the Kennedy was intending to back away from the commitment to a U. S. lunar landing program for which they had been willing to approve exponential budget increases in 1961 and 1962. Webb was “a little surprised” by this reaction, thinking that “a President ought to be able to put that kind of thing for­ward in a speech at the UN for discussion on a world-wide basis.” Based on his September 18 conversation with the president, reducing his support for Apollo was not Webb’s understanding of the reason for Kennedy’s pro­posal; Webb took “Kennedy’s word on the basis of full faith and credit” that his reason for suggesting cooperation was related to broader strategic issues.

Columnist Drew Pearson noted that “one of the most significant points about JFK’s U. N. speech was that he bucked the wrath of the senior and sometimes wrathy moguls of Congress.” Pearson expected Representative Albert Thomas to “bellow like a Texas steer at the idea of taking part of the moon project away from Houston and putting it in Moscow.” Pearson recog­nized that the reasoning behind Kennedy’s proposal was “his new strategy of pushing for peace: The belief that you have to build one success on top of another if the peace is to be won. He had scored one important international success with the test-ban treaty. And he had the alternative of sitting still and letting the favorable atmosphere which it created slowly get nibbled away by the harpies, or of proposing new dramatic moves to strengthen the founda­tion for peace.”34

Pearson was correct about Albert Thomas. Thomas, who had used his position as chair of the House appropriations subcommittee in control of NASA funds to bring the Manned Spacecraft Center to the Houston area, wrote to President Kennedy on September 21. He first commended the president on his speech the previous day, saying that “it clearly sets you out as the leader of the world in international affairs.” He then noted that “the press and many private individuals seized upon your offer to cooperate with the Russians in a moon shot as a weakening of your former position of a forthright and strong effort in lunar landings.” Thomas asked Kennedy for “a letter clarifying your position with reference to our immediate effort in this regard.”35

Kennedy quickly replied in a letter that stands as the clearest statement of his rationale for the cooperative proposal. He stated that “in my view an energetic continuation of our strong space effort is essential, and the need for this effort is, if anything, increased by our intent to work for increasing cooperation if the Soviet Government proves willing.” He noted that “the idea of cooperation in space is not new,” and that “my statement in the United Nations is a direct development of a policy long held by the United States Government.” He added:

This great national effort and this steadily stated readiness to cooperate with others are not in conflict. They are mutually supporting elements of a single policy. We do not make our space effort with the narrow purpose of national aggrandizement. We make it so that the United States may have a leading and honorable role in mankind’s peaceful conquest of space. It is this great effort which permits us now to offer increased cooperation with no suspicion anywhere that we speak from weakness. And in the same way, our readiness to cooperate with others enlarges the international meaning of our own peaceful American program in space.

In my judgment, then, our renewed and extended purpose of cooperation, so far from offering any excuse for slackening or weakness in our space effort, is one reason more for moving ahead with the great program to which we have been committed as a country for more than two years.

So the position of the United States is clear. If cooperation is possible, we mean to cooperate, and we shall do so from a position made strong and solid by our national effort in space. If cooperation is not possible—and as realists we must plan for this contingency too—then the same strong national effort will serve all free men’s interest in space, and protect us also against possible hazards to our national security. So let us press on.36

Even before the president’s United Nations speech, the House of Representatives had reduced NASA’s budget for Fiscal Year 1964 from the $5.7 billion that had been requested by the president to $5.1 billion, a cut of almost 11 percent. A post-speech attempt on the floor of the House to reduce the NASA budget by an additional $700 million was defeated by a 47 to 132 vote after four hours of acrimonious debate, but the House did approve by a 125-110 margin a resolution saying that no part of the NASA appropriation could be used for a cooperative program involving any “Communist, Communist-dominated or Communist controlled country.”37

James Webb was able to convince the Senate Appropriations Committee to modify, but not delete, this prohibition, and the final NASA FY1963 appropriations bill included a statement that “no part of any appropriation made available to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration by this Act shall be used for the expenses of participating in a manned lunar landing to be carried out jointly by the United States and any other country without the consent of Congress.”38 This statement was incorporated into the appro­priations bill over the objections of the White House.