A Crop of Weeds

For 19 days, confronted by the most crucial economic and political issue to come before it in 1956, the U.S. Senate squabbled and made all manner of political noises. One Senator after another rose during the debate to say that the farm bill must provide a really sense-making solution to the problems of the nation's agricultural economy. One dreary night last week the Senate finally passed its bill. It was no more than a tangled crop of political weeds.

Early in its farm season the Senate had seemed to be plowing a straight furrow. There was almost unanimous support for the Eisenhower Administration's soil bank plan, which could reduce surpluses and put some sure money into farmers' pockets this year. In the first votes on the issue, a majority upheld the Administration's flexible price support system (TIME, March 19). But then political pressure got too strong, blocs of special interest Senators amended the bill to a condition described by Vermont's Republican Senator George Aiken as "tortured and battered, warped and emasculated."

Peanuts in the Parks. Corn Senators, milk Senators, wheat Senators, cotton Senators, hog Senators, rice Senators and peanut Senators had formed a series of log-rolling alliances. They pushed through an increase in corn acreage, a two-price system for wheat, a dual parity plan covering cotton, wheat, corn and peanuts, a two-price plan for rice, mandatory support prices for feed grains and higher supports for dairy products. Then, in a crowning touch of irresponsibility, they voted to "set aside," i.e., ignore, much of the stored surplus commodities. Asked Vermont's exasperated Aiken: "Why not a formula which ties the price of peanuts to the batting average of the Washington Nationals or the New York Yankees, whichever is higher? And we all know which will be higher. This could be rationalized, since peanuts are consumed in all ballparks."

In the end, after 41 amendments were adopted, the net effect was 1) nullification of the flexible system, 2) a general increase in support levels. As a result, the U.S. Department of Agriculture would be spending millions of dollars to cure surpluses through the soil bank plan and millions more to fill the bins again through high price supports.

Veto in the Offing? From the Senate the legislative monstrosity went to a House-Senate conference committee, to be reconciled with a House bill passed last year simply restoring rigid 90% supports. At his news conference President Eisenhower expressed the hope that the conference committee would produce a good bill, and carefully avoided discussion of a veto. But he left no doubt about his opinion of the Senate version. "I don't think it is a good bill," he said. "I don't think it is workable. I think it would bury the farmers under surpluses that they couldn't stand, and it would break the prices still further."

Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson went a step further. Said he: "I cannot conceive of President Eisenhower signing a farm bill he knows and I know is a bad bill."

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