832 



HISTORY or THE COMMITTE1 ON SCIENCE AND TE( HNOLOCi 



was very disturbing to the supporters of the bill. At 8a.m. on Monday, 

 August 30, Teague summoned the GAO before the full committee to 

 quiz them on the report and attempt to counteract the widely unfavor- 

 able publicity and damage it had done to the bill. Obviously disturbed, 

 Teague addressed an old friend, Phillip S. ("Sam") Hughes, Assistant 

 Comptroller General of the United States: 



Sam, you and I have been around this place a long time; we've been working 

 together for a long tunc, if I remember right, about 25 years. And I think that prob- 

 n those 25 years I was most disappointed when I got this report. Now, Sam, I 

 don't know I thought I knew generally what causes you people to put out reports 

 like this. * * * Now, what 1 would like to know, Sam, it would seem to me that 

 this is a definite effort to sabotage this bill to kill the bill, if von want, and it's 

 done a pretty good job so far. But who was behind this, who wrote it; who 

 directed- it? 



Hughes answered: 



I'm sorry that you have the reaction that you do to the report. We feel -or we 

 wouldn't have submitted it that it has a good deal oi substantive comment and that 

 it should help in dealing with what is a very complex set of problems. * * * It seems 

 to us that the basic issue is really what rhe Congress and the Government should do 

 right now about synthetic fuels in the context of a very complicated energy situation. 



McCormack echoed the allegation that the report "is to undermine this 

 legislation." He contended that the bill was designed to provide in- 

 formation, "and it's not a commercialization program", therefore the 

 effect of the GAO report "is to prohibit us from knowing." McCor- 

 mack stated that the GAO report was "based on a number of pre- 

 posterous assumptions." Various other Members took pot shots at 

 Hughes and the GAO. Teague concluded that the committee would go 

 to the floor with an open rule, giving anybody and everybody a chance 

 to amend or improve the bill. In some exasperation, he asked Hughes: 



Now how on God's earth could a committee in Congress come up with a fairer 

 synthetic fuels bill than that? How would you do it? You've had more experience than 

 I have. \\ hat would you do? What would you do differently than what we've done? 



Hughes responded: 



Mr. Teague, 1 haven't had more experience than you've had, and I don't apologize 

 for that.* * * We are obviously not trying to "do in" the synthetic fuels option. We 

 think it's important to pursue it, and we think it's important to pursue it hard. We 

 think, however, that it is very important to pursue it in a way which doesn't make it 

 preemptive. We are concerned with that, and that's why we have come up with the 

 report that we have come up with. In a personal sense, I can't help but regret that it's 

 causing you, sir, obviously a great deal of trouble. 



On the witness stand following Hughes, Dr. William McCormick, 

 Jr., former OMB official and more recently ERDA's Director of the 

 Office of Commercialization, defended the loan guarantee program as 

 "not an effort to permanently subsidize the ongoing production of 



