634 HISTORY OF THE COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 



announced his support for the concept. He explained his prior 

 reservations : 



I am one of those who, although somewhat persuaded by the arguments that we 

 have heard before this committee on the need for a special adviser to the President on 

 science, always felt if he didn't want it, I wasn't going to try to make him have it 



THE PROSPECTS FOR LEGISLATION IN 1975 



Despite the resounding dramatic success of the committee's use of 

 the Vice President's visit as a sounding board, Teague was not opti- 

 mistic about getting legislation on the statute books in 1975- He was 

 not even sure the committee could beat the clock sufficiently to get a 

 bill through the House before the end of the year. The committee 

 in five days of June hearings plunged ahead to analyze the Teague- 

 Mosher bill, the administration bill and to vacuum up advice from 

 many other sources. 



Once again, the staff outdid itself in providing a voluminous col- 

 lection of information and advice, not only for the committee members, 

 but also for the information of the public and scholars everywhere. 

 To begin with, there was a tightly organized 61-page report on the 

 Teague-Mosher bill and its background and rationale. Each com- 

 mittee member was provided with a nine-part handbook, covering the 

 hearing schedule and witnesses, the full background of the Teague- 

 Mosher and administration bills, cost estimates, description of Federal 

 agencies involved, the full rationale of the Teague-Mosher bill, a 

 series of pros and cons of various sections of the bill, and a host of 

 suggested questions for the witnesses, plus a comparison of the Teague- 

 Mosher bill with S. 32 — the Senate version. The entire handbook, 

 which the committee eventually had printed in the back of the 1975 

 hearings, covered 78 printed pages. By the time the 1975 hearings and 

 the many appendices had been printed, they constituted 1,041 pages of 

 rich ore for anyone who cared to mine it. 



In opening the hearings, Teague outlined some of the contrasts 

 between the Teague-Mosher bill and the administration bill. He 

 remarked that the committee bill included a "number of controversial 

 aspects," adding: 



We have tried not to duck anything, and there is a reason for everything in 

 the bill. 



Once again, he stressed that "it is not, however, cast in concrete." 

 Teague proved by his subsequent actions that he was completely flex- 

 ible in his approach, with no undue pride of authorship for ideas 

 which had been forged over the years. 



