Even as the United States House of Representatives moved toward what many viewed as inevitable - a vote to abolish the 23-year-old Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) - the agency's director, Roger Herdman, headed for the office of Sen. Arlen Specter (R- Pa.). Herdman hoped the presidential aspirant would help halt the anti-OTA juggernaut in the Senate.
To Herdman's surprise, late last month the House narrowly approved a compromise - contained in an amendment to the House's $1.7 billion Legislative Branch Appropriations Bill - that would spare the embattled agency, trim its $22 million budget by about one-third, and move OTA into the Library of Congress.
Nevertheless, Herdman points out, that compromise still can be undone in the Senate, which later this summer must vote on its own appropriations measure detailing spending limits for Congress. After that, it must also survive conference-committee budget wrangling between the two houses.
So Herdman, ...
