S( ii \< i i\ mi wiiri e ho 643 



strong points of view for which they managed to get powerful backing 

 from the Senators they represented. 



On December 3, 1975, Vice President Rockefeller wrote ;i letter 

 to Senator Kennedy which included this sentence: "1 urge you to move 

 for prompt Senate approval of the House bill." Senator Kennedy 

 responded on December 8 that "there are a number oi areas in which 

 the House bill should be strengthened," and "it is in the national 

 interest that we attempt to improve the legislation in the Senate." 

 During December, there was a great deal of confusion as the adminis- 

 tration began to realize that there was a whole new ball game. Various 

 members of the scientific community helped stir things up by blaming 

 numerous parties to the struggle for holding things up. Although it 

 was extremely difficult to separate rumor from fact, it is evident that 

 the White House hoped to salvage an acceptable bill by creating a 

 coalition of Republican Senate Members plus the backers of the 

 House-passed version, and then win by driving a wedge into the 

 three Senate committees. 



THE BILL PASSES THE SENATE 



By February 5, 1976, when the bill had cleared the three Senate 

 committees, many of the extraneous provisions in the old S. 32 had 

 been dropped — such as the power of OSTP to decide spending levels for 

 science and technology. That same day the Senate passed the House bill 

 after amending it to include the text of S. 32 as reported. But there were 

 still storm signals ahead. It is interesting that during this period the 

 House staff of a Democratically led House seemed closer to the Republi- 

 can led White House — in a Presidential election year, at that — than to 

 the Democratically led Senate. The basic cleavage between the House 

 and Senate turned on the House conviction that the President should 

 have wide authority to determine how the White House science 

 machinery should be fashioned, as against the firm feeling of Senator 

 Kennedy that the Congress was writing legislation not for President 

 Ford but for all Presidents and it must stand for the long future. 



On February 10, Yeager prepared a crisp, two-page analysis of 

 the major differences between the House and Senate bills, along with 

 recommendations for Teague to consider on strategy to be followed 

 during negotiations with the Senate. The memorandum contained 

 items such as this: 



Title I: There are 6 or 7 clauses in the Senate Statement of Policy about which 

 they feel strongly and which are not contained in the House version. 



Commenr.—Wc should have no trouble incorporating these into the House ver- 

 sion of Title 1. 



There were other items discussed in the February 10 memorandum 

 on which it was suggested that the House stand firm. The memoran- 



