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The omnibus research bill passed the Senate in '49 and it passed the House on August 15, 1950. This was at least something. It was not the big package of things that we needed, but it was something.

Was there an appropriation included in that?

No, there was no money included, and we were going to have to go and get the money. This, as I've said, established the National Institute of Arthritis and Metabolic Diseases and the National Institute for Neurological Diseases and Blindness. When Biemiller let me know of the passage of the bill, I had no apprehension there would be any difficulty about getting it signed. I phoned Matt Connolly at the White House to say that I thought the sponsors of the two new institute bills should be photographed with the President when he signed it. Matt Connolly said he'd let me know when the bill came to the President's desk. Within a week he phoned me and dropped what for me was a bombshell. He said, “I'm afraid the bill won't be signed.” I gasped. “Why not?” He said, “The Budget has written a memorandum attached to the bill saying, ‘While the purposes of the bill are all right, the method of establishing more institutes to get these results is bad.”

I suspect that the Public Health Service in order to save face had gotten after the Budget or written the memo and got somebody low down in the Budget to attach this to the bill.