522 HISTORY OF THE COMMITTE1 ON SCIENCI WD rECHNOLOGY 



\\ vdlcr disagreed : 



The fact of the matter is that what we are talking about here is the spending of 

 Federal tax dollars. That is the issue. That is not something that the school districts 

 are doing; it is something that the Federal Government is doing by taking Federal 

 money and spending it to produce certain results, and then selling that to the school 

 districts, and making a value judgment in that process 



Ottinger pointed out: 



I assure the members that the Holy Bible would never pass muster under the kind 

 ot den \ in which my friend the gentleman from \i i/.ona is engaging because 



in the Holy Bible there is murder indeed murder ol brother against brother, Cain 

 against Abel. 



Mrs. Lloyd presented this analogy: 



It we found our school lunch programs dilatory in providing wholesome food for 

 our children, what would we do? We would move promptly to see that the problem 

 was eradicated. In the same way, I think we must examine these education programs; 

 to look into the food for children's minds. 



Wirth stated: 



What is at issue here is not what we choose to teach our children, but whether 

 we have a choice. I believe very strongly that program decisions of this kind should 

 be made on the local level By continuing the MACOS authorization we are not re- 

 quiring any local school board to adopt it. We are giving them the opportunitv to 

 select it. 



HOUSE NARROWLY DEFEATS CONLAN AMENDMENT 



The debate was hot and heavy, with the committee splitting a 

 little more along partisan lines and coming down more strongly against 

 the Conlan amendment than they had in the committee vote on March 

 6. The Conlan amendment was rejected by the House, 216 to 196. 

 Committee Democrats voted 22 to 3 against the Conlan amendment, 

 while committee Republicans split 8 to 3 in support. 



The aftermath of the MACOS light on April 9 was still another 

 serious light. The committee discovered immediately they were not out 

 of the woods yet. Representative Robert E. Bauman (Republican of 

 Maryland) offered an amendment requiring NSF to transmit to Con- 

 gress every 30 days a list of proposed grants, which could not become 

 effective if either House disapproved of any of them by resolution. 

 Bauman had a field day describing silly sounding projects, even though 

 some of them (as Mosher pointed out) were funded by agencies other 

 than NSF. Bauman argued that this authority was necessary for Con- 

 gress to exercise oversight, and not simply pass the buck to "some- 

 bureaucrat." Symington and Mosher stated that it would bean intoler- 

 able burden for the Congress to read and pass on 14,000 to 16,000 NSF 

 grants per year. The Bauman amendment passed by the narrow margin 



