National Affairs: Billions in the Trough

For all the fine talk of welfare, urban housing and the unemployed, the first U.S. citizens who are likely to collect heavily from the New Frontier are those old reliables, the farmers. Last week the feed-grain bill, the first of President Kennedy's 16 emergency bills, was steered through House and Senate. House and Senate differences will be compromised this week, but the net promise is for an increase in price supports for corn (from $1.06 to $1.20) and grain sorghums for farmers who cut back their acreage from 20% (House version) to 30% (Senate version). In lieu of grain not grown, they would receive a combination of cash and payments in surplus grain.

Agriculture Secretary Orville Freeman had asked for authority to drop the market price of corn down to $1 a bushel in order to pressure farmers into the acreage-restriction program. The House gave him the authority, but the Senate denied it, and Illinois' Everett Dirksen, Senate Republican leader, extracted a promise from his Senate Democratic colleague, Agriculture Committee Chairman Allen Ellender, that he would not give Freeman the power to drop prices. To help this toothless program through Congress, Secretary Freeman sweetened the pot to the tune of some $2 billion this year by raising support prices for dairy farmers, with a few special increases for rice and peanuts.