Stumped Experts

Even when cloaked in don't-quote-me anonymity, a member of Congress rarely admits that a major national problem totally baffles him. But on Capitol Hill these days, lawmakers are confessing bafflement in the face of the massive and growing farm-subsidy scandal. "I admit I don't know what should be done," says a don't-quote-me G.O.P. wheat-state Senator. Vermont's George Aiken, ranking Republican on the Senate Agriculture Committee and longtime farm policy specialist, shakes his head in confessed bewilderment. Louisiana's Allen Ellender, Agriculture Committee chairman, mutters, "I wish I knew," when asked what he thinks Congress will do about farm reform this session.

Needed: A Moses. The same bafflement was evident in the face and voice of Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson last week during his grim, two-day appearance before the Agriculture Committee to argue his case for lower price supports.*The arithmetic of Benson's battle fatigue: when he took over as Agriculture Secretary six years ago, he vowed to slash the cost of farm programs, which had averaged $1.5 billion a year in 1950-52; but in 1956-58, Agriculture Department outgo averaged $4.5 billion a year, and in the current fiscal year the total is estimated at a shocking $7 billion. The Federal Government's inventory of wheat, corn, cotton and other surplus farm commodities recently climbed to a new peak of $9 billion. And out in the wheat and corn belts, the soil is heavy with stored up moisture, hinting at bumper crops that may mock Benson's hopes of holding farm-program outlays to $6 billion in fiscal 1960.

"It looks as though we need a Moses in this field," said Chairman Ellender to Witness Benson. Other committee members, Republicans as well as Democrats, made it plain that they did not see Bible-quoting Mormon Apostle Benson as the needed Moses. Missouri Democrat Stuart Symington charged Benson with trying to "lick this problem with phrases." North Dakota Republican Milton R. Young rumbled that the lower wheat supports requested by Benson "would break every wheat farmer in the U.S."

Brannan Revisited. The failure of Congress and the Administration to cope with the farm scandal has revived talk among Democrats about the once-buried Brannan plan, devised in 1949 by Harry Truman's Agriculture Secretary Charles Brannan (now general counsel of the left-wing Farmers Union). Under that scheme, the farmer would sell his crops on the free market, and the Federal Government would send him periodic checks to make up the difference between market prices and support prices. Georgia's Senator Herman Talmadge is sponsoring a Brannan-type measure to cover the six "basics" (wheat, corn, cotton, rice, peanuts, tobacco), and Minnesota's Humphrey is working on a broader farm bill that will include some Brannan direct payment gimmicks.

But the big blunt fact that came out of last week's hearings was that the farm subsidy scandal has long since ceased to be a problem to be settled by so-called farm experts. It is a $7 billion drain on the national treasury in a day when the Administration is scratching for money to buy missiles. Whether the Agriculture Secretary's name is Brannan or Benson --or Moses--the farm subsidy problem has become an ever-growing national problem with a direct effect on the national welfare.

*on problem crops at 75% to 90% of the average market price during the preceding three years, instead of supporting prices at various percent ages of parity, an archaic formula based on prices and costs in the long-gone years 1910-14.

For wheat, the No. 1 problem crop, 75% of parity comes to $1.81 per bushel (the latest support price); 75% of the 1956-1958 average mar ket price works out at $1.43 per bushel.

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