554 HISTORY OF THE COMMIT! I I ON S( II X< I AND TECHNOLOGY 



However, the fact that the committee tried in 1970 made it easier 

 in the next Congress to get the approval of the Committee on Rules 

 and go through regular Legislative channels to get support for the 

 OTA bill. Also, other Members were not caught by surprise by the 

 new and unusual nature of the concept, which had already been 

 widely discussed in the newspapers, trade journals and throughout the 

 scientific community. By now, "early warning" on technology had 

 been part of the Nation's vocabulary for five years, the legislation 

 had been introduced and discussed in the Senate, and letters were 

 starting to come in from around the country to urge many Congressmen 

 that this was an idea whose time had come. 



UNANIMOUS COMMITTEE SUPPORT FOR OTA BILL 



When the new chairman of the Subcommittee on Science, Research 

 and Development, Congressman Davis, asked the full committee 

 members in January 1971, who wanted to sponsor an identical version 

 of the 1970 OTA bill, he received a surprising response: all 28 members 

 wanted to get on board. Davis dropped the bill into the hopper on 

 February 2 and it looked as though OTA was off to the races at last. 

 To speed things up further, Chairman Miller decided that since full 

 hearings had been held late in 1969 and in 1970, including the held 

 hearings in California and Missouri, the committee would ]ust go 

 ahead and crank the bill through the legislative process without time- 

 consuming and duplicative hearings. After all, such hearings would 

 only serve the purpose of orienting new Members and going through 

 the motions; the former could be handled by the subcommittee and 

 the latter wasn't worth the effort. 



Several developments early in 1971 converged to delay considera- 

 tion of the OTA bill. Daddario, the driving force behind the years of 

 preliminary work on the bill, was gone from Congress. For a consider- 

 able part of the spring, Davis, his successor, was ill and it was difficult 

 to make firm decisions. Miller did not want to push in the absence of 

 Davis. In February and March, the NASA and NSF authorization bills 

 occupied the full attention of the committee. The new emphasis which 

 OMB had directed NSF to throw into the research applied to national 

 needs (RANN) program and other unexamined issues forced the NSF 

 hearings to spill over into April. Not until the NSF bill had been 

 passed by the House in early June could the committee shake loose 

 to concentrate on the OTA bill. 



Finally on June 10, the subcommittee met and unanimously re- 

 ported the bill. It was agreed to submit several minor amendments 

 when the full committee met. Chairman Miller called an executive- 

 session of the full committee for July 22, and the bill was warmly 



