Statement Announcing the Membership of the Commission on Population Growth and the American Future

ON MARCH 16, I approved a bill establishing a Commission on Population Growth and the American Future, and appointed John D. Rockefeller 3d as Chairman. I am pleased to announce the full membership of this most important Commission.

The mandate of the Commission is both large and challenging. The Commission will tell us what we should anticipate in the way of population growth in the United States, where we can expect that population to settle, and how we can most properly deal with it. It will then consider what steps the Nation should take to best meet the problem of excessive population density and too rapid growth.

The Congress made a substantial contribution to my proposal through amendments calling upon the Commission to consider how population is affecting our environment and natural resources, and further stating that in setting forth a population level best suited to the Nation's assets and resources, the Commission would consider appropriate ethical values and principles.

This approach to the population problem--both in the formulation of my proposal and the support demonstrated by the Congress--has been clearly bipartisan. In appointing Commission members, I have kept this bipartisan spirit very much in mind. And because this Commission will be so vitally concerned with charting a steady course for this Nation as we move toward the year 2000, I have made certain that the Commission will have youthful representation and participation.