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HISTORY OF THE COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 



him to submit testimony to a House Government Operations subcom- 

 mittee on August 3. In his prepared statement, he pointed out that the 

 plan changed the 1976 act by transferring the annual and five-year 

 outlook reports to the National Science Foundation. He also noted the 

 reorganization made other changes in statutory requirements by abol- 

 ishing certain specifically established committees and coordinating 

 councils and transferring their functions to the President for later 

 redelegation. Teaguc told the House subcommittee: 



Frankly, I tin J it impossible to tell, from all that the White House has provided so 

 far, whether or not statutory functions mandated in P.L. 94-282 [the 1976 Act] have 

 in fact been abolished. Every one of the modifications made to that law by the Reor- 

 ganization Plan is vague and uncertain. The device of transferring statutory functions 

 to the President for later redelegation is particularly unfortunate because it gives the 

 Congress no idea of their final disposition. 



OMB Director Bert Lance tried to calm Teague's fears with a more 

 detailed explanation of the reorganization in a letter of August 26. 

 Lance in effect contended that the work could be done more efficiently 

 in places and through means different than those stipulated by 

 Congress. Teague would not buy this explanation. He again ex- 

 pressed his disagreements in a letter to the new OMB Director, 

 James T. Mclntyre, Jr., on September 27. Teague especially underlined 

 the fact that the reports, as well as the two-year survey, could hardly 

 be done according to the intent of Congress if they were piecemealed 

 out to subordinate, scattered groups. Teague told Mclntyre: 



Let me observe initially that the feeling expressed informally to us that the 

 preparation of these reports could become a burden to the small staff of the OSTP 

 is disappointing to us. We look on these reports as important and necessary additions 

 to the process of formulating the Nation's science and technology policy. We would 

 hope that their preparation would be looked on as a challenge, involving a broad- 

 gauged approach to both current and longer term policy issues in this field and in- 

 volving some of the best minds of the country. 



Teague also stressed that the reports and the survey should genuinely 

 represent Presidential policy, which could hardly be done by con- 

 tracting out the work to private groups or by stapling together mis- 

 cellaneous papers fashioned by lower level bureaucrats. 



Mosher, who had retired from the Congress at the end of 1976 

 and became the committee's executive director on September 1, 1977, 

 echoed Teague's concern in an October 17 memorandum to all com- 

 mittee members. Based on a visit he made to Dr. Press with several 

 other committee staff, Mosher informed committee members that it 

 was "most disturbing" that the White House looked on the title 

 III survey "not as a single, comprehensive, and integrated study, bur 

 as a group of 13 individual and separate studies. This clearly negates 

 the value to the Congress (and probably also to the President and the 



