1022 HISTORY OF THE COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 



President Ford wrote Teague and Mosher on October 8 endorsing the 

 legislation. The committee reported the bill unanimously, although 

 Brown appended "additional views" to the committee report criti- 

 cizing the lack of long-range planning language in the legislation. 

 After long and difficult negotiations between the Senate and Science 

 Committee staffs, the conference committee met to work out the final 

 details. President Ford signed the legislation in the East Garden of 

 the White House on May 11, 1976, before about 200 guests. There 

 were some differences which Teague expressed to President Carter's 

 Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy over interpre- 

 tation of the 1976 act. But when Fuqua became chairman he took the 

 position that the new President and OSTP Director were entitled to 

 devise the kind of operation they found most comfortable— so long as 

 they did not, like President Nixon had, dismantle the machinery or 

 violate its central goals. 



Chapter XIV 



Starting in 1971, the focus of the committee began to broaden 

 with the establishment of the task force and later the Subcommittee 

 on Energy under McCormack's leadership. Three landmark pieces of 

 legislation were developed by the Energy Subcommittee and enacted 

 in 1974: the Solar Heating and Cooling Act of 1974; the Solar Energy 

 Research, Development, and Demonstration Act of 1974; and the Geo- 

 thermal Energy Research, Development, and Demonstration Act of 

 1974. McCormack's influence added another dimension to the com- 

 mittee's jurisdiction as he coined the concept of "demonstration" to 

 stretch the committee's activity beyond R. & D. 



The task force and Subcommittee on Energy firmly established 

 the reputation of the Science Committee in the energy field, and its 

 expertise was recognized both in and out of the Congress. The suc- 

 cessful work accomplished under McCormack's leadership had a direct 

 relationship to the expansion of the committee's jurisdiction in the 

 energy area in 1974. 



Chapter XV 



The year 1974 was a watershed year for the Science Committee. 

 For it was during that year that the Select Committee on Committees, 

 headed by Representative Richard Boiling (Democrat of Missouri) 

 recommended vastly expanded authority and responsibility for the 

 Science Committee— principally through legislative jurisdiction over 

 all energy research and development, plus oversight authority over 

 all Federal R. & D. and broadened jurisdiction over civil aviation and 

 environmental R. & D. There were also other refinements, such as 

 abolition of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy and transfer of its 



