130 HISTORY OF THE COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 



cance outside the committee as it served to forge closer ties with the 

 scientific community. The panel began to concentrate on central 

 themes, was well attended by a wide number of invited scientific 

 guests, and received wide attention by the news media. 



WHY THE DADDARIO SUBCOMMITTEE WAS FORMED 



In 1963, the convergence of several events, and the emergence of 

 just the right congressional personality, sparked the creation of a new 

 and significant subcommittee — the Daddario Subcommittee on Science, 

 Research and Development. 



The naming of the subcommittee provided an interesting twist. It 

 was originally planned to call it the "Subcommittee on Scientific Re- 

 search and Development." Mrs. Eilene Galloway, of the Library of 

 Congress Legislative Reference Service, argued strenuously that a 

 broader charter would result if a comma were placed after the word 

 "Science" in the title. She won her point. 



Congress and the Nation were becoming uneasily aware that 

 Federal spending for research and development was rocketing upward. 

 From $74 million in 1940, the Federal price tag had mounted to $2 

 billion in 1953- Many Congressmen, despite the research which went 

 into the development of the atomic bomb in the Manhattan project, 

 were uncomfortable with the doling out of such huge amounts for 

 research. 



The chairman of the House Committee on Rules, that crafty 

 manager of the abattoir of liberal legislation, Representative Howard 

 W. Smith (Democrat of Virginia), decided to set up a select committee 

 to investigate where these research dollars were going. Because of the 

 huge increase of Federal research spending from $2 billion in 1953 to 

 $12.2 billion in 1963, the Smith resolution gained widespread support 

 editorially, in letters from home, and within the Congress itself. 

 At the same time, the groundswell of popular support caused many 

 committee chairmen to shake in their jurisdictional boots. Chairman 

 Oren Harris of the Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee, with 

 the huge expenditures for the National Institutes of Health research 

 under his jurisdiction, voiced concern behind the scenes, as did Chair- 

 man Miller whose Science and Astronautics Committee had over 25 

 percent of Federal research spending under its jurisdiction. Chairman 

 Carl Vinson of the House Armed Services Committee took another 

 defensive tack: he set up a special subcommittee for military research. 



During early August, there were many huddles among members of 

 the Science Committee. Daddario, Miller, and other senior members 

 of the Committee seriously considered openly opposing the resolution. 



Speaker McCormack tapped Representative Carl Elliott (Democrat 



