104 HISTORY OF THE COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 



have to accept so much on faith. I would like to echo what has been said earlier in 

 the morning, that there is, I think, a desperate need for more technically trained 

 staff assistants for us. 



Chairman Miller adroitly sidestepped the many requests for ad- 

 ditional staff, and adhered to his determined plan to keep the staff 

 reasonably small and controllable. When the pressure got heavy 

 Miller pleaded that there was insufficient space to house additional 

 staff. But even when the committee moved to more spacious quarters 

 in the Rayburn Building, when the space was available, the staff 

 remained small. 



The major functions of the staff did not differ materially from 

 what they had been during the Brooks years. But the organization, 

 tone, and logic showed marked improvement. Under Chairman Miller, 

 there was more advanced planning of hearings, scheduling of witnesses, 

 and less of a tendency to summon high-ranking officials to coincide 

 with spectacularly newsworthy events. There was a marked increase 

 in the number of inquiries from Members to staff. These were generally 

 routed through Ducander, except of course for the subcommittee 

 matters being handled by the regularly assigned staff members. Chair- 

 man Miller frequently expressed to those pressing for expanded staff 

 that he was against using the staff to handle congressional constituent 

 business (even though this was not contemplated). 



Chairman Miller stressed the value of field trips and foreign trips, 

 and he encouraged all committee members to visit not only NASA 

 installations but also the Bureau of Standards and other scientific 

 centers. Some committee members, notably Hechler and Fulton, made 

 some attempts to expand the staff through a series of field investigators 

 who could monitor the work at the various installations and then 

 report back to the committee. As it turns out, field intelligence was 

 derived almost entirely from trips to installations. And the staff con- 

 tinued to accomplish an almost superhuman amount of work in staffing 

 hearings, conducting investigations, and producing a wide variety of 

 useful reports. 



ADDITIONAL ASSISTANCE 



The committee made good use of the General Accounting Office, 

 yet concluded that the accent of its investigations was on administra- 

 tive performance and accounting, monetary, or budgetary matters. The 

 committee members clearly felt the need for more technical, scientific, 

 and engineering assistance beyond what was being supplied by the 

 Legislative Reference Service of the Library of Congress. In later years, 

 largely through the s'timulus of the Committee on Science and Astro- 

 nautics, LRS created a Science Policy Research Division in 1964. But 

 in the early 1960's, when there were complex policy decisions to be 



