The Farm Scandal (Contd.)

The bill up for discussion before a caucus of Senate Republicans one day last week promised to freeze farm props for another year at the surplus-building levels that cost the U.S. $3.25 billion last fiscal year. Already passed by both branches of Congress (TIME, March 31), it was a deliberate slap in the face for Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson, who wants permission to cut farm subsidies and make a start toward whittling down the scandalous farm-surplus problem. The argument essentially was between principle and politics. It took the Republican caucus exactly 80 minutes to stand foursquare with politics, to vote 17 to 14 for an unseemly decision. The decision: to ask the President to sign the support-freeze bill.

South Dakota's Karl Mundt, who has long since jumped the Eisenhower team on farm policy, began by urging a last-ditch plea for the President to sign. Nebraska's Carl Curtis backed him up, and North Dakota's Milton Young remarked tartly that President Eisenhower had certainly not been talking about farm-prop cuts during the 1956 campaign. Quite the contrary, claimed Young, and added portentously: "Explain that to your farmers." Colorado's Gordon Allott suggested that the caucus might take advantage of the recession by casting the farm freeze as one of the antirecession pump-primers currently in favor with both the Administration and Congress. Utah's Arthur Watkins argued against a caucus resolution favoring the farm-freeze bill, pointing out that his fellow Mormon, Ezra Benson, would surely resign if Ike were to sign it. At that point, over the smeared luncheon dishes, the other Republican Senators grinned widely and nodded hopefully.*

It was Ohio's John Bricker who provided the clinching argument for politics over principle. On point of principle, Bricker had voted against the farm freeze. On point of principle, he assured his colleagues, he would vote to sustain a veto. But in the interests of helping farm-belt Republicans get elected this fall, he hoped the President would sign--and he favored a petition to that effect. That did it: the Republicans voted by show of hands to urge Ike to sign the bill that he had called a "180DEG turn in the wrong direction."

The Democrats were delighted. Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson quickly got 40 of his fellow Democrats to sign a petition urging the President to sign--and commending the Republicans for their anti-Administration stand.

* After checking a cross section of farmers to see which party they thought best served their interests, a Gallup poll last week reported: Democrats 62%, Republicans 15%.

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