lg HISTORY OI- THE COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 



standing House Committee on Science and Astronautics. Two relatively- 

 junior Members of the House, both low on the totem pole in the pres- 

 tigious Committee on Rules, shared honors in reporting Carl Albert's 

 Resolution 580 out to the House of Representatives. The report from 

 the Committee on Rules was written by a huge, St. Bernard-like 

 Irishman from Cambridge, Mass., named Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill, Jr., 

 later to become Speaker of the House — who in 1958 was only in his 

 sixth year in the House. Floor leader in charge of the debate on Albert's 

 Resolution was a comparatively junior Congressman from Missouri, a 

 protege of Speaker Rayburn named Richard Boiling — who was serving 

 his 10th year in the House. 



O'Neill's report included these significant comments: 



Flic purpose of and reason for this resolution is to set up a committee having full 

 and complete jurisdiction in a broad area that has come to have great significance ill 

 recent years. Aside from the spectacular developments which are being made in outer 

 space research and which have both military and civilian importance, mankind has 

 reached that stage in the development of science and the industrial arts where govern- 

 ments must, as a matter of survival, give new emphasis and attention to basic research. 

 Legislative action in those fields is certain to become a matter of greater frequency 

 and greater importance in the near future. We think we have come to the time in 

 which a committee with across-the-board jurisdiction in this area should be es- 

 tablished. Our Government is now engaged in considerable research efforts in many 

 fields of pure science, and it is the part of wisdom that these efforts be studied and 

 examined from a legislative angle, and the establishment of this committee em- 

 phasizing this field will make a marked contribution in this direction. 



When Boiling brought up the Albert resolution on July 21, there 

 was very little debate and no opposition on the House floor. Boiling's 

 statement, as is his custom, was succinct and to the point: 



The standing committee will take over, and continue, the work started by the 

 House Select Committee on Astronautics and Space Exploration. Certain functions of 

 the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce and the Armed Services Commit- 

 tee will be transferred to this committee; namely, legislation relating to the scientific 

 agencies — the Bureau of Standards, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics 

 (NASA had not yet officially been launched) and the National Science Foundation. 

 The chairmen of the Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee and the Armed 

 Services Committee agree with these proposed transfers 



Boiling was perhaps technically accurate when he professed that 

 Oren Harris and Carl Vinson agreed with the proposed transfers. Cer- 

 tainly Vinson, who wanted so badly to remove Overton Brooks from 

 his committee, saw the logic of the jurisdictional transfers. But as 

 time went on, both Harris and Vinson screamed lustily as the long 

 tentacles of the fledgling committee began to reach into areas the old 

 warlords regarded as. their private domain. Hell hath no fury like a 

 committee chairman who feels another committee is impinging on his 

 jurisdiction! 



