The Farm Scandal (Contd.)

"This bill does not have a snowball's chance in hell," wailed a House Democratic leader. Echoed Vermont's George Aiken, senior Republican on the Senate Agriculture Committee: "If the Administration persists on this plan, there will be no bill this year." Work was still going on at the committee level in Congress last week, but Democrats and Republicans in both branches of Congress were already predicting a smashing defeat for one of President Kennedy's major items of legislation: a costly, catchall farm bill.

The controversial core of the Kennedy farm plan comes under the bill's Title One. It would give farmers a golden opportunity to choose among several Government aid programs depending upon which one they thought would be the most attractive. The possibilities include combinations of tight and generously subsidized acreage control and high price supports. Under a commodity-group system, committees of farmers would submit their own schemes to Agriculture Secretary Orville Freeman, who would then draw up a plan for each commodity, submit it to all involved for approval. After two-thirds of the farmers in each commodity group okayed the plan, it would go to the Congress for final approval or veto. U.S. farmers, voting in less expansive referendums in the past, have almost never failed to cast an over whelming ballot for more Government aid.

Rubber Stamp. Designed to please everyone down on the farm, the bill has pleased hardly anyone on Capitol Hill. Legislators shudder at the prospect of a farmers' free-for-all as each group fights for the best deal it can get. Many big-city Democratic Congressmen want nothing to do with legislation that fattens the farmer --at the expense of the consumer. But what really irks both parties in both chambers is the fact that the bill takes away from Congress the power to write farm legislation and gives it to the farmers and Agriculture Secretary Freeman. Under the bill, Congress cannot change the plans, must either kill or rubber-stamp them as they stand.

For such reasons, five Southern Democrats on the 36-man House Agriculture Committee seemed almost certain to vote against the farm bill. Along with 14 committee Republicans, their ballots would be enough to kill the plan then and there.

Mounting Mountain. House Democrats lay much of the blame for the situation on Agriculture Secretary Freeman, who sent up Kennedy's controversial bill without really bothering to sound out congressional opinion. Says a House leader: "They didn't do their political homework before they did their legal drafting." Says a White House strategist: "The picture is pretty black. It's a barrel of eels."

To save the day, House leaders are trying to get Secretary Freeman to tone down his bill. At week's end Freeman was ready to make some compromises, but gave no indication that he was willing to scrap Title One. There was little time to lose. As Freeman fretted, his Agriculture Department announced that this year's bumper crop of wheat would add about another 125 million bu. to the stockpile that already totals 1,450,000,000 bu. Every day the U.S. spends $1,400,000 just to store a mountain of surplus food that now is worth $9.4 billion.

So the worst of U.S. domestic scandals gets worse all the time.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.