530 HISTORY OF THI COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 



together to focus on problems like water waste management, health 

 and energy, with an aim to provide accurate scientific information; 

 (3) plans were laid for "Public Service Science Centers," to enable 

 reliable scientific information to be made available to meet local needs. 

 Initially, the position of the House conferees was that this provision 

 should be carried out on an experimental basis only, that the funding 

 should be cut to $400,000, and that language should be removed from 

 the legislation and placed in the committee report instead. Actually, 

 the science for citizens program was not new. The authorization act 

 passed in 1975 required the NSF to submit to Congress a plan for a 

 science for citizens program, which was done in February 1976. But 

 the plan proposed did not seem to have the same activist tone as what 

 Senator Kennedy was advocating. Thus, the House conferees continued 

 to object to the size and scope of the Senate-proposed program, and 

 another joint Symington-Mosher letter on July 2 expressed this and 

 other objections to the Senate conferees. The letter added: 



We have considerable doubt about being able to take a conference report to the 

 House which would contain a bill changed in very major ways from the bill passed 

 by the House. 



THE CONTROVERSY ESCALATES 



The House and Senate staffs, as was customary, tried very hard 

 to narrow the gaps between the House and Senate positions. The 

 science for citizens program was symbolic. McCormack's concern was 

 heightened by the activity of citizen groups in a public referendum 

 in California on future construction of nuclear powerplants; would 

 the science for citizens program help finance a proliferation of other 

 efforts similar in character? A July 8 memorandum from Dr. Wells to 

 Teague stated: "This could be a 'political thicket' that would make 

 MACOS look like a picnic if it is not handled with care." 



Another provision added by the Senate set up a new State science, 

 engineering, and technology program authorizing $8 million for 

 grants to States to be further distributed by States to increase their 

 "capacity for wise application of science, engineering, and technology 

 to meeting the needs of its citizens." This was essentially a use of the 

 revenue-sharing approach. 



In calling a meeting of the House conferees for July 22, Teague 

 commented: 



The NSF authorization bill presents more difficulties than in any past year The 

 overall problem is that the Senate unilaterally changed the "rules" on what tra- 

 ditionally goes into an authorization bill for the NSF * * * One measure of this is 

 that the bill passed bv the Senate has twentv-three pages to only six in the House- 

 passed bill. 



