Politics Over Statesmanship

"I hope the gentleman will not try to make a statesman out of me," rumbled Tennessee's Democratic Congressman Ross Bass on the House floor last week. "Let's talk politics." Rarely has Ross Bass or any other Congressman come closer to expressing the will of the House. Under debate was a wheat-subsidy bill--and the outcome was 100% political, unalloyed by the slightest pretense of statesmanship.

For weeks, the House had been working on a bill to replace one that had piled up a $3 billion wheat surplus in Government storage bins. What it finally brought forth, by a vote of 188 (176 Democrats and twelve farm-state Republicans) to 177 (114 Republicans and 63 Democrats) was a legislative monstrosity. Even the bill's sponsor, Oklahoma Democrat Carl Albert, admitted: "Nobody wants the bill . . . None of the farm groups, wheat organizations or producers support it." But if nothing else, the House wheat bill lived up to a time-hallowed political principle: When in doubt, give the farmers more, not less.

In its simplest terms, the Democratic bill gives wheat farmers a referendum choice between 1) supports at 90% of parity with a 25% cut in acreage allotments, or 2) 50% of parity with no acreage controls. From the House it goes to a joint conference committee which will have the task of working out a compromise between the House bill and an even costlier Senate bill. If President Eisenhower vetoes the conference version, the choice before wheat farmers will remain as it is under present law: 75% of parity with acreage allotments unchanged, or 50% with no acreage controls. And bad as that is, it is certainly better than anything the 86th Congress seems capable of producing.

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