The Senate Loves the Farmer

FISCAL The Senate Loves the Farmer

It is an old Congressional custom for Congressmen to oppose every tax bill and vote for every appropriation bill, all the while beating their breasts for economy in government. Last week the U. S. Treasury faced a legal limit to its spending, and Senate debate ran true to form.

Any bill appropriating money for the U. S. farmers could be passed viva voce in the Senate the minute it is introduced, but the Senate would never consider doing it that way. The "orderly process" is to study a House-passed bill, such as this year's $714,000,000 farm measure, find places to drape on added gifts, then pass it, with every Senator given his chance to roar devotion to U. S. agriculture.

Thus the Senate last week upped the House bill to a full billion dollars. The economy promises of Republicans & Democrats alike melted in the warm Christmassy glow of giving presents to the farmers. Only real economy champions: Virginia's Byrd, Ohio's Taft.

Sugar. Producers of corn, cotton, wheat, rice, tobacco legally may not receive more than $10,000 a year in benefit payments. Sugar is a special case. Annually 130 Hawaiian and Puerto Rican sugar producers get more than $10,000 in benefits; 31 of them get payments ranging individually from $102,927 to $665,211 a year. Only three U. S. producers get such big subsidies: U. S. Sugar Corp., Clewiston, Fla. got $430,420 in 1937, last year about the same.

Pennypincher Byrd, citing this situation, took a vicious cut at the sugar lobby, moved to apply the general $10,000 limit to sugar producers. Crushed, 46-23, he tried for a $50,000 limit, was crushed again, 37-27. Only argument for the huge subsidies was fuzzy : that Hawaiian & Puerto Rican producers, stripped of their fat subsidies, might get miffed, abandon the control program, ruin small domestic producers; i.e., that benefits must be paid foreign producers to persuade them to let U. S. producers exist. No one could understand this; but the Senate has always understood the sugar lobby.

Spice. Pennypincher Taft, urging general economy, called the farm bill "suicidal." The mere word "economy" enrages Texas' Tom Connally in any year; this election year (he is up), it drives him crazy. He took the Senate floor to belabor Mr. Taft, went for him with ridicule and bad grammar. Connally got Mr. Taft in a tight corner when he made him admit that he was for economy but also for farm subsidies. Then South Carolina's Jimmy Byrnes, Appropriation committeeman, remarked that Mr. Taft, although a committee-member, had at no time this year tried to reduce any item in any of the four big appropriation bills. Stung, Mr. Taft said he had tried to reduce one bill 10 or 20% -- "I forget which."

Everything Nice. The Senate passed the farm bill, sent it to conference with the House, where members of the economy bloc were frankly gloomy. Still Congress had not faced the grim fact that the statutory debt limit -- $45,000,000,000 --was nearly reached. As of Feb. 29 there was but $2,471,334,975 of leeway between limit and public debt, and Secretary of the Treasury Morgenthau has announced that he won't sign checks for one penny past the limit. It is up to Congress, said he, to raise the roof to $50,000,000,000. Meanwhile he did what he could to prepare for the future. The Treasury announced that:

> After April 1, U. S. baby bonds will be sold only to individuals -- not corporations or institutions. Effect: to reduce expected growth in the public debt by about $200,000,000 in the next year.

> First 20 days of March saw a 31.2% rise ($621,000,000) in income tax collections over last year.

> The $2,000,000,000 stabilization fund will be held strictly as a "nest egg" for time of grave national crisis. But: "in this crazy world anything might happen." No one in the Senate rose to deny this assertion ; but Senators were united in one tacit stipulation: that nothing must happen to the U. S. farmer in an election year.

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