804 HISTORY OF IHi COMMITTE1 ON SCIENC1 AND rECHNOLOGY 



entitled CO receive staff assistance? Or, put another way, is a staff 

 member being disloyal if he works at the direction of a minority of 

 committee members, rather than falling in line to carry out the will 

 of the majority of committee members? These questions were debated 

 with some emotion, with Finnegan at the center of the discussion. 



From Teague's and Swigert's standpoint, they also wanted to 

 make sure that the existing staff was fully utilized. This meant that 

 at the beginning of every Congress, a selling job was necessary to 

 assign staff members to mutually agreeable positions. In 1974, the 

 whole process was in a transition period. No longer, as in the Brooks 

 and Miller days, could a committee chairman dictate which staff 

 would be assigned, without respect to compatibility, to particular 

 subcommittees. On the other hand, there were many subtle ways in 

 which the same objective could be performed within limits. Brown, 

 for example, w-as not eager to retain Hammill as his staff director, 

 yet kept him on during the 94th Congress. Bill Wells, after working 

 for Milford for several months during 1975, asked to be transferred 

 because of incompatibility and accepted a position as deputy on the 

 Science, Research and Technology Subcommittee until the following 

 Congress. 



Throughout, Swigert retained general control by means of staff 

 meetings, general instructions, and the full backing of Teague. 



JURISDICTION BETWEEN SUBCOMMITTEES 



There were several jurisdictional shakedowns which remained to 

 be resolved before the subcommittees could proceed with their work 

 on the ERDA budget. First, there was the little matter of environment 

 and safety in the ERDA budget. Ordinarily, Brown's Subcommittee 

 on Environment and the Atmosphere would have handled this section 

 of the authorization. But Hechler and McCormack argued that any- 

 work on environment and safety was inextricably interwined with 

 what was being authorized for R. & D. in both fossil and nonfossil 

 areas, therefore should be considered by the Hechler and McCormack 

 subcommittees. 



A second dispute arose between Hechler and McCormack over 

 the issue of magnetohydrodynamics — a process of using coal which 

 was burned at a high temperature to convert heat directly to electricity 

 by passing an electrically conducting fluid through a magnetic field. 

 Because the MHD process involved energy conversion, it was initially 

 given to the McCormack subcommittee. Hechler stepped in and 

 contended that because coal was being used to produce electricity the 

 subject belonged in the Fossil Subcommittee. McCormack argued that 

 coal was only incidentally being used in an advanced energy conver- 

 sion process, which was essentially energy conversion technology. 



