Why Johnny Can't Eat: The Saga of the Farm Bill
Balz, Dan
Why Johnny Can't Eat: The Saga of the Farm Bill by Dan Balz There are few ideal times for Congress to legislate, but 1975 should have been a perfect time for a new farm program. The Rome World...
...As the bill moved across the Senate, the members of the Committee on Agriculture and Forestry had two choices...
...The lobbyists lined up: in favor of the override were the National Farmers Organization, National Farmers Union, AFL-CIO, National Milk Producers Federation, and the Consumer Federation...
...But like cotton, the dairy industry has been tarnished by its political contributions and the aggressive economic power of the big co-ops...
...She knew better than to reject the bill simply for that reason, but she was especially concerned about cotton and milk...
...But the emergency farm bill had upset him...
...Ford and Butz came out winners for another reason...
...When they hear ‘cotton’ they still see the man in his white suit and Panama hat standing on the courthouse steps watching some poor black boy being lynched...
...The consumer vote was disorganized and disoriented and when the vote came, it was 40 votes short of paradise, 245 to 182...
...During the fight over the 1973 farm bill (named, significantly enough, the Agriculture and Consumer Protection Act) an attempt was made to include consumer groups, but it was too late...
...In December 1974 Peter Peyser, a New York Republican, wrote an open letter to the incoming freshmen which was printed on the op-ed page of The New York Times...
...When she took over the Federation, she recognized immediately that for consumers, the food issue was shifting from questions of health and safety (remember food additives...
...That cleared the way for a decision by organized labor, and it came swiftly...
...No one could shake the habit of lumping into one farm bill the problems of grains, dairy, and cotton...
...Ford was zeroing in on those critical swing votes...
...But he was playing with a President who was beginning to assert himself as an executive, and a President furthermore who could count...
...She opposed the farm bill...
...What the farmers feared most was what the rest of the world wanted desperately-good weather in the Midwest, bountiful harvests, and some easing of the tight world grain supplies...
...Second, the bill was too narrowin scope...
...Doing all these things, and more, was a tall order, but not beyond reason for a Congress which announced proudly that it was ready to take its legislative responsibilities seriously...
...They still carried the votes, but people with a bent toward consumerism found in cotton a convenient whipping boy...
...The National Consumer Congress opposed it...
...That cleared the way for a decision by organized labor, and it came swiftly...
...When George Meany supports a farm bill,” Earl Butz said, “I want to see the fine print...
...In his veto message Ford contended that the bill would add $1.8 billion to the federal deficit, an estimate which supporters of the bill said was another Department of Agriculture phony...
...The Department overplayed its hand, but not so badly that its attempted snow job was a failure...
...But what everyone forgot was their susceptibility to the hustle, and it began almost immediately...
...The new bill exceeded even the generosity of Hubert Humphrey, who, in a bill he offered last fall, had recommended $3 for wheat and $2 for corn...
...She and others at the Federation decided, somewhat reluctantly, that the increase in the milk support price had to go, too...
...He forgot that most of the freshmen attracted to the Agriculture Committee were Democrats, a lot of them from rural, usually Republican districts...
...Ford and Butz kept up their loan rate hustle...
...He is not a symbol of segregation...
...The fear of mass starvation, the need to rebuild international grain reserves, the necessity of American farmers producing all out, and the political overtones of U. S. food aid all made it clear that 1975 was a year for Congress to review the government’s food policy and if necessary-and there were few who believed it wasn’t necessarybring that policy up to date...
...But as a chairman of the Democratic Study Group, the instrument of reform in the House, Foley had helped set the tone which was to bring down Poage and the others...
...Instead of being 22 votes short of a two-thirds majority, the Housc was now 28 short...
...If the House could not override the veto, there was no reason for the Senate to waste its time...
...On that committee, Mayer actually participated in developing the Federation’s position...
...The real failure was one of leadership...
...the concrete details still mystify even some experts...
...If the House could not override the veto, there was no reason for the Senate to waste its time...
...In the last few months much has been made of this coalition, of its importance and its potential power...
...She and others at the Federation decided, somewhat reluctantly, that the increase in the milk support price had to go, too...
...Butz and his Department didn’t want a bill in early 1975, although they recognized that farmers might need some small increases in target prices and loan levels if they were to stay in business...
...But as reapportionment and migration reduced the strength of the farm bloc in Congress, representatives of the farm community found that they could not pass a bill on their own...
...But the path was full of pitfalls...
...She knew better than to reject the bill simply for that reason, but she was especially concerned about cotton and milk...
...There were no longer any easy ways to satisfy the competing desires of the American farmer, the American consumer, and the hungry people of Bangladesh and the African Sahel...
...Not only did they block a bill they disliked...
...Sometimes the leaders of the movement don’t get along...
...Stating it this way is a little too simple, for the Consumer Federation recommendation did not exactly come as a surprise to Mayer...
...The Road to Oblivion Each hustle had begotten another...
...He said that if new members wanted to make a difference, if they wanted to grapple with international and domestic problems, if they wanted to help their constituents, they should join the Agriculture Committee...
...In the end Congress came up empty-handed, with no bill, no useful ideas upon which to build, and its leadership demoralized...
...he worked for the Office of Economic Opportunity...
...He knows that what the world worries about now is food, and he has a reason for the consumers to believe in and help the cotton farmers...
...It demoralized people and probably ended for this year the hope that Congress can come up with a substantive farm program...
...Many of the senators most interested in farm legislationHubert Humphrey, George McGovern and Walter Mondale come to mindwere also out front pushing social legislation favored by labor...
...So in 1975, King Cotton was on the run, shunted aside by the interests it used to dominate...
...It was something which few peopleleast of all most members of Congresshad been worrying about...
...His statisticians estimated how much the bill would add to shoppers’ burdens each week at the supermarket...
...It had come too early in the session, for one thing...
...there is anger at the Department for its cost estimates...
...With the addition of consumers to the farmlabor coalition, cotton became further isolated...
...that was supposed to come in 1977...
...Butz knew the hustle was on...
...The letter played on the notion that there were simple answers to the problems of food, that the consumers had been short-changed primarily because there were no consumer advocates on the panel, and that there were hungry people in India because no one on the committee had cared about that problem...
...the consumer groups were consul ted only after the bill had been shaped...
...the economy...
...George Mahon of Texas, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee...
...In short order the bill was on its way to conference, and Earl Butz was yelling veto...
...In the end it was that reflex action whch sealed the bill’s fate, for it exposed to anyone willing to take a hard look that this was not a serious piece of legislation...
...But he was playing with a President who was beginning to assert himself as an executive, and a President furthermore who could count...
...This may sound terribly simple, but it was absolutely essential in forging the connection between the two groups...
...So bcgan the final hustle, the Jerry Ford hustle...
...Because weather has worried People since the banishment from Eden, the problems which worried farmers were not unique, but they had a special twist...
...Labor, in the meantime, was stepping up pressure for social legislation and discovering tha t, on certain kinds of issues, it needed some support from the rural legislators...
...Nationally there are three groups of importance: the National Consumers League, the National Consumer Congress, and the Consumer Federation of America...
...The Senate approved the conference report by voice vote on April 17...
...At the same time, they wanted policies which “provided adequate incentives for the farmer”-i.e., higher prices-and urged further that food policy “recognize the vital importance of agricultural exports” to sustain farm income and buoy up the balance of payments...
...So in 1975, King Cotton was on the run, shunted aside by the interests it used to dominate...
...was the extent of the “alliance,” but when it spoke to Congress it tried to sound as if 60 million laborers, 10 million farmers, and 200 million consumers were speaking with one voice . The farm bill went to the House floor on March 18 amid threats from Earl Butz that President Ford would veto it, and confusion over whether it helped or hurt the consumer...
...He helped sponsor legislation blocking the rise in the price of food stamps...
...Department of Agriculture has deliberately misled the people into thinking that these projected increases in the cost of milk and butter would occur at once and would be solely the result of this bill,” he said...
...All that was missing was a recommendation that the farmers sell high and the consumers buy low...
...was the extent of the “alliance,” but when it spoke to Congress it tried to sound as if 60 million laborers, 10 million farmers, and 200 million consumers were speaking with one voice . The farm bill went to the House floor on March 18 amid threats from Earl Butz that President Ford would veto it, and confusion over whether it helped or hurt the consumer...
...Like other consumer representatives, Foreman was disturbed by the Agriculture Department’s cost estimates...
...Actually, over half of the increases are the result of inflation which occurs during the period up to March 30, 1976...
...Butz had never liked the target price concept very well, preferring to find “free market” ways to keep farm income up...
...There were institutional reasons for optimism when the session opened in January...
...No one, not even Earl Butz, questioned the fact that farmers faced some problems this year, and that the threat of lower market prices could reduce their income...
...Foreman decided the Consumer Federation could not endorse the cotton sections...
...He is a long-time friend of Carol Foreman, an even better friend of her husband (who is employed by the retail clerks union), and, moreover, sits on the executive committee of the Consumer Federation...
...With the addition of consumers to the farmlabor coalition, cotton became further isolated...
...In the Senate the coalition was easily formed...
...But some thing smelled wrong about those numbers, and a few of the representatives went down to the Department’s headquarters to find out more...
...Peyser’s message got through, but it was a siren’s song to a lot of gullible members...
...The bill also increased loan levels (which are essentially price floors) and raised the support price for milk from 80 per cent of parity to 85 per cent...
...A small, bearded, cheerful man, he has been around Washington for nearly 20 years lobbying for union causes, and in the past several years he has helped strengthen the farmlabor link...
...But Ford also said the bill would cost not only taxpayers, but farmers and consumers as well, and as vulnerable as those Department estimates may have been, they continued to dance in the minds of those who would have to vote on an override...
...the Oxford in his background is Oxford University in England, where he went after graduation from Harvard...
...The bill that came out of the committee in March 1975 was an even greater affront to Butz...
...If prices go up, that’s bad...
...Bowen’s own defense of cotton is suitably up-to-date and progressive...
...As the bill moved across the Senate, the members of the Committee on Agriculture and Forestry had two choices...
...For many years, neither side needed the other...
...Representative Thomas Foley of Washington, a 46-year-old Democrat in good standing, had by the good graces of the freshmen become chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, the first nonSoutherner to hold that seat in more than 20 years, and perhaps the first man ever with interests and ties that went far beyond the narrow scope of farm legislation...
...Foley and others are gun-shy, wondering now what kind of bill it will take to win the President’s signature, worried about what step to take next...
...She began asking questions of people like Jim Hightower and Susan DeMarco of the Agribusiness Accountability Project...
...Not only did they block a bill they disliked...
...Sometimes no one knows who the leaders are...
...The Senate Republicans, in a policy statement last December, had shown the folly of trying to satisfy everyone...
...So bcgan the final hustle, the Jerry Ford hustle...
...He didn’t fight the civil rights movement...
...Ford decided eventually that it’s far better to win without having to give up anything...
...the farniers to the subcommittee members to the Department of Agriculture to the farin-labor-coiisutner coalition to cotton...
...CC King Cotton Dethroned King Cotton, the old ruler of the farm bloc, has been on the defensive lately...
...The links between parts of the farm movement and organized labor are recent ones, mostly developed over the past ten years...
...The lobbyists lined up: in favor of the override were the National Farmers Organization, National Farmers Union, AFL-CIO, National Milk Producers Federation, and the Consumer Federation...
...The vote in favor was 248 to 166...
...The government’s projection of a 20-cent-per-pound increase on butter, which has generated so much adverse comment on this bill, should have been less than five cents per pound...
...It says simply that cotton is a non-food commodity, and as such is not important to solving the world food problem...
...Dan Balz is a reporter for the National Journal...
...Months later there is still confusion about exactly how the farm bill, HR 4296, began-and why...
...Butz knew the hustle was on...
...The bill made it through the Senate painlessly enough, while the air of unreality thickened...
...To urban people, cotton is clearly a pariah,” Foley once said...
...In 1975 he knew the swing votes on the farm bill belonged to the consumers, and those were the votes he set out to win...
...Only the Consumer Federation was willing to endorse it-and not, as we will see, just because the Federation thought the bill helped consumers...
...One theory, suggested by those intimately involved, is that it started as old Bob Poage’s revenge, as a strike to regain lost prestige...
...Labor gets farm votes on minimum wage bills, protection on food stamps for strikers, and backing on a few other key issues...
...So when the House committee reported out the emergency farm hill on March 4, the reaction everyone was waiting to hear was that of the consumers and, to a smaller degree, of labor...
...In his years as Secretary, Butz had learned to read the House well...
...Everyone expected a veto by then...
...there is anger at the Department for its cost estimates...
...It had assumed that the answer to the problems of hungry people, of frustrated consumers, and of worried farmers lay in the simple, reflex action of boosting prices, an approach which did nothing to guarantee the creation of new domestic reserve stocks, nor to guarantee that American food aid would go to those who truly needed it...
...Once the committee had acted, the Agriculture Department began its hustle...
...In her 18 months she has learned well her economics and politics...
...When they hear ‘cotton’ they still see the man in his white suit and Panama hat standing on the courthouse steps watching some poor black boy being lynched...
...Since first impressions and early headlines count for so much, the later repudiation of Agriculture’s estimates failed to erase their initial impact...
...Peyser is so taken with his new role that he’s started wearing cowboy boots on the floor of the House and is proud as punch to be invited to serve as speaker at conventions of cattlemen out West...
...Everyone expected a veto by then...
...The members got to work immediately after the House passed the bill, trying to beat the Easter recess deadline...
...He didn’t fight the civil rights movement...
...But more important, there is fear on the House committee...
...Labor, in contrast, had assumed such a strong role in farm legislation that its lobbyists often dictated the terms of the bills...
...Poage didn't like to deal face-to-face with the farm-labor coalition, but he recognized its existence and gradually came to depend on those votes to get his bills through...
...The most they could hope for was that the conference comnlittee would reject the costly Senate version and go back to the House provision...
...in the end, that is what thc conference did...
...If prices go down, that’s good...
...On one occasion he assembled representatives of one consumer organization in a room with representatives .of the cotton shippers and the bakers lobby...
...To many, Foley represented all that a committee chairman should be: moderately young, bright, broadminded, progressive, and sensitive to the new currents flowing through the House...
...By contrast, the Agriculture Department was willing to support levels of $2.30 to $2.50 for wheat and something below $2 for corn...
...But the Department of Agriculture knew the bill was most vulnerable on cotton and milk, and that was where it zeroed in...
...Cotton is no longer cotton, in this Bowen hustle, but rather cottonseed meal, a high-protein substance now fed to animals but being adapted for human use...
...The bill made it through the Senate painlessly enough, while the air of unreality thickened...
...George Mahon of Texas, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee...
...In 1973 it became apparent to people like Bergland, Barton, and Foley that the coalition needed one more member, this time the consumers...
...It can happen again...
...There was no reason for Butz and Ford to give in on a bill which even farmstate senators knew was short-sighted...
...The Consumer Federation endorsement, with its reservations about cotton and milk, offered a solution, and Mayer readily admitted that it was the Federation’s announce me nt that influenced him to recommend a similar position...
...For farmers, protection would mean accepting some system of grain reserves-even though this meant that the government might release some of the reserves and hold down the price in years when farmers would otherwise make a killing...
...The fighting has left a bitter taste in many mouths...
...Foley had not sought the job, nor had he picked a fight with the existing chairman, W. R. (Bob) Poage of Texas, as had other ambitious Democrats on other committees...
...It could hardly have done worse...
...in the past, labor had been able to do some trading on its own bills before the farm bill came up...
...So if farm income starts falling next year, if corn and wheat prices start to drop after a good harvest this year and the prospect of another one in 1976, don’t be . surprised if you see Earl Butz out there jacking up the loan rates and shoveling money into rural America...
...the farm groups get support on farm bills, once labor and consumer groups explain what they’re willing to accept...
...Still primarily middle class and suburban in their perspective, they live by the barometer of prices...
...When the theoreticians of the labor movement and the farm bloc analyzed their common problems, someone realized that each really wanted the same thing from legislation: some kind of price guarantee...
...But the farmers had a lcgitimate case: unless they had some guarantee against losing their shirts, they would refuse to plant the extra acres...
...For many of them, the world of food politics is no more complicated than that...
...Something else made people think the committee was ready for a revival...
...There was no suggestion that some of the goals might be contradictory, or that unpleasant steps, such as reduced domestic consumption, or increased public interference with the food supply, might have to be taken...
...In an age of consumerism, of rich farmers and poor people, of urban politicians and media showmanship, this means that the old-fashioned con job still thrives...
...On April 22 the report was taken up by the House...
...Ford and Butz kept up their loan rate hustle...
...On April 22 the report was taken up by the House...
...Carol Foreman’s sophistication shows up in her performance on food policy...
...There would be larger political payoffs if that could come in another year...
...The real failure was one of leadership...
...Farm bills are simply dull...
...So if farm income starts falling next year, if corn and wheat prices start to drop after a good harvest this year and the prospect of another one in 1976, don’t be . surprised if you see Earl Butz out there jacking up the loan rates and shoveling money into rural America...
...When congressmen thought about the food problem, they thought about dissatisfied consumers who had not gotten used to the new plateau of food prices...
...There was no member of the House better suited to wed the competing needs of farmer and consumer...
...The Earl Crisis The defeat did more than kill a bad bill...
...But as labor became more important on farm legislation, cotton’s dominance slowly diminished, even though the Southerners who defended cotton held key positions in Congress: Herman Talmadge of Georgia, chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee...
...But after three extraordinarily good years, they seemed in less urgent need of protection than in the past, while the Poage bill gave them far more than ever before...
...This year it may have helped keep cotton in the bill, a decision which ultimately contributed to the measure’s death...
...John Stennis of Mississippi, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee...
...In the old days, cotton farmers got the biggest payments from the farm programs, usually got the sweetest deals on loans and could count almost always on some “technical” detail in the farm bill to reward them handsomely for their efforts...
...and world agriculture in the 1970s...
...against were the Farm Bureau, the National Consumer Congress, and Common Cause...
...The most important thing to know about the consumer movement is that no one knows what it is or what it does...
...But this year the consumer vote was pivotal...
...He had protected the food stamp program from the attacks by Southern Democrats on the Agriculture Committee, and had spent countless hours impressing upon his rural friends how important it was to get urban votes on farm bills...
...The fighting has left a bitter taste in many mouths...
...But as labor became more important on farm legislation, cotton’s dominance slowly diminished, even though the Southerners who defended cotton held key positions in Congress: Herman Talmadge of Georgia, chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee...
...The vote was 259 to 162...
...On March 4, the Federation announced it would support the bill if those two sections were changed...
...Only the Department has the resources to produce the data everyone wants, and for that reason the Department’s ploy was almost totally successful...
...The decision about dairy prices was more difficult, and she agonized for a time over the plight of the little dairymen, who have been losing money in many parts of the country...
...Bowen is a Democrat from Mississippi, now in his second term, who already chairs the cotton sub committee on the House Agriculture Committee...
...Bowen knew that cotton was in trouble and that the only way it could survive was to make people believe that the old coalition still existed-that the South belonged, and that cotton was still mighty...
...It pretended to deal with the world food problem through the single approach of raising farm income...
...It demoralized people and probably ended for this year the hope that Congress can come up with a substantive farm program...
...By March 20 it had passed exactly as labor and the Consumer Federation had wanted...
...Butz said the Department would keep its eye on milk supports...
...Therefore, the theory goes, cotton should not be rewarded through legislation...
...Grain reserves worry Herman Talmadge, and Talmadge was chairman of the committee...
...In the old days, cotton farmers got the biggest payments from the farm programs, usually got the sweetest deals on loans and could count almost always on some “technical” detail in the farm bill to reward them handsomely for their efforts...
...A small, bearded, cheerful man, he has been around Washington for nearly 20 years lobbying for union causes, and in the past several years he has helped strengthen the farmlabor link...
...In a year which demanded changes in traditional approaches to farm policy, Congress instinctively looked backward for an answer, for an easy solution...
...The committee decided to roll over and play dead, its own special kind of hustle, rather than facing the tough problem of solving world food problems through creation of American grain reserves...
...James Eastland of Mississippi, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and number two on Agriculture...
...The Consumer Federation endorsement, with its reservations about cotton and milk, offered a solution, and Mayer readily admitted that it was the Federation’s announce me nt that influenced him to recommend a similar position...
...John Stennis of Mississippi, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee...
...Peter Peyser Picked a Peck...
...The Senate seemed to consider both the House and Talmadge’s committee cheapskates and approved an amendment sponsored by Lee Metcalf of Montana (for Mike Mansfield, the majority leader) to raise the wheat target from an incredible $3.10 a bushel to an astronomical $3.41...
...Like Foreman, he was bothered by the bill’s generosity and had been scratching his head, looking for an easy way out...
...The action shifted back to the House for the last time...
...The Education of Carol Foreman The consumer movement’s Achilles heel is its lack of political sophistication...
...Consumers discovered the farm sometime in early 1973, shortly after the Soviet Union bought all our extra grain and the price of beef started to rise...
...Their main concern was surviving the 1976 election, when they wouldn’t be able to run against Watergate, and they knew that nothing would please their constituents more than high price supports...
...Bowen used his credentials as a professor of political science to put the stamp of credibility on that press release, but it had a purpose other than historical analysis...
...In the House, things were tougher, so it was left to people like Foley and Bob Bergland of Minnesota to build the links slowly...
...the farniers to the subcommittee members to the Department of Agriculture to the farin-labor-coiisutner coalition to cotton...
...It also demonstrates the extent to which all groups-business, labor, farmers-are trying to flee the workings of a free market...
...By March 20 it had passed exactly as labor and the Consumer Federation had wanted...
...One is Peter Peyser, a man not always trusted by members of the consumer movement...
...So there should have been no pressure to slap together a quick solution before the old program expired...
...On March 4, the Federation announced it would support the bill if those two sections were changed...
...The Senate approved the conference report by voice vote on April 17...
...The freshmen regarded the committee not as Ultima Thule, as their predecessors had (in 1973 Agriculture was the least popular), but as a kind of promised land...
...That is what happened to the reconstituted 94th Congress in the first five months of 1975...
...Bowen evokes no fluffy images of cotton, nor does he rhapsodize on cotton’s historical role in the American economy and the Southern culture...
...On the floor, John Anderson of Illinois said Ford was still prepared to keep lus eye on farm inconie and loan rates and would not let farms fail...
...Peyser’s message came through...
...against were the Farm Bureau, the National Consumer Congress, and Common Cause...
...That provision called for an annual increase in target prices to keep farmers abreast of inflation, and Butz succeeded in delaying it until 1976...
...Whether Poage, who had heard threats about the weather before, believed the farmers were in a genuine emergency is not important, for there were a lot of other members of the committee who did-enough members in fact, that if Poage decided a farmers’ emergency bill was the right vehicle for reasserting his own ‘importance, the subcommittee would go along...
...Foley had worked during his ten years in the House to tie rural interests to those of organized labor and the urban Democrats...
...The Rome World Food Conference had caught the world’s attention last November...
...to those of economics...
...Even Poage shook his head over the generosity of the bill...
...They will look for other issues, smaller bills, to regain their lost prestige, to restore their confidence...
...But the damage had been done...
...Almost everyone is forced to rely on the Department for basic agricultural statistics: the legislators, the committee staffs, the lobbyists, the press, and the public...
...CC King Cotton Dethroned King Cotton, the old ruler of the farm bloc, has been on the defensive lately...
...For government officials worried about oil imports, it would mean foregoing some of those attractive earnings on agricultural exports, and having the courage to increase commitments for humanitarian food aid...
...I want to see what deals have been made...
...But many hoped that, for political reasons, Ford and Butz would throw a bone toward the farmers even while rejecting the bill...
...This...
...A day later the cotten hustle began...
...The Department began emitting the customary reams of statistics estimating the cost of the bill, but these statistics were different from any before...
...They persuaded her that consumers were imperiled not by rapacious farmers, especially the smaller farmer, but by the larger food companies and grain traders...
...They could take the bill seriously and try to cure its defects, or they could assume (quite accurately) that Butz’s veto threats were serious, accept the fact (quite reasonably) that they had been dealt a bad hand, roll over, play dead, and later blame it all on the House...
...The members got to work immediately after the House passed the bill, trying to beat the Easter recess deadline...
...Presented with an opportunity to construct a rational food policy, Congress muffed it because it was too anxious to offer farmers a payoff and unwilling to call a halt to a series of snow jobs advanced by everyone who had a stake in the bill...
...That complicates things for people interested in counting votes...
...there would be no announcement of higher loan rates...
...Bowen’s gambit may become more important in the next few years as he works to restore some of cotton’s image and power in the farm bloc...
...One of the unpleasant realities that faced Congress as it began deliberation this year was that everyone involved in the issue was crying for greater protection...
...Butz had used the veto threat as a bargaining tool in 1973, and managed to get that year’s bill altered to his taste...
...Jamie Whitten of Mississippi (often called the permanent Secretary of Agriculture), chairman until 1975 of the Appropriations subcommittee that handles the Department of Agriculture budget...
...everyone knew it, which is why so many people were scrambling over each other to be known as the "voice of the consumer" in Congress...
...A few weeks after the 94th Congress started to work, the farmers’ hustle had won enough members to guarantee that Congress would focus on the problem of farm income and not on any broader questions of food policy...
...Bowen evokes no fluffy images of cotton, nor does he rhapsodize on cotton’s historical role in the American economy and the Southern culture...
...This year it may have helped keep cotton in the bill, a decision which ultimately contributed to the measure’s death...
...Jamie Whitten of Mississippi (often called the permanent Secretary of Agriculture), chairman until 1975 of the Appropriations subcommittee that handles the Department of Agriculture budget...
...Butz had used the veto threat as a bargaining tool in 1973, and managed to get that year’s bill altered to his taste...
...A day later the cotten hustle began...
...James Eastland of Mississippi, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and number two on Agriculture...
...The farmers’ hustle and the blind enthusiasm of the freshmen, to whom Foley was indebted for h s chairmanship, had spun h m against the wall...
...This year he could not get his way from Congress, and the veto would be more than a threat...
...It had come too early in the session, for one thing...
...Bowen’s own defense of cotton is suitably up-to-date and progressive...
...He had accepted the concept-but only after forcing Congress to back down on what he considered one of the most repugnant features of the farm bill...
...in the past, labor had been able to do some trading on its own bills before the farm bill came up...
...The vote was 259 to 162...
...It can happen again...
...As the year began, 21 new faces populated the committee, 15 of them newly elected to Congress...
...Butz hmted that a bone might be on the way, saying that Ford was prepared, if necessary, to increase loan rates if farm prices plunged...
...The unions, said George Meany, would support the bill if the cotton and dairy sections were pruned back, a position identical to that of the Consumer Federation...
...Foley and others are gun-shy, wondering now what kind of bill it will take to win the President’s signature, worried about what step to take next...
...the farm groups get support on farm bills, once labor and consumer groups explain what they’re willing to accept...
...Congress would, at some point, have to balance the competing interests, but because the farmers started agitating first and loudest, warning of massive bankruptcies or significantly reduced production, their hyperbole fell on unusually receptive ears...
...Ford was zeroing in on those critical swing votes...
...He helped elect one President that way in 1972...
...The one person in the movement who sees the world differently is Carol Tucker Foreman, executive director of the Consumer Federation...
...They could take the bill seriously and try to cure its defects, or they could assume (quite accurately) that Butz’s veto threats were serious, accept the fact (quite reasonably) that they had been dealt a bad hand, roll over, play dead, and later blame it all on the House...
...There was no reason for Butz and Ford to give in on a bill which even farmstate senators knew was short-sighted...
...When the freshmen challenged Poage, Foley came to his defense...
...The Earl Crisis The defeat did more than kill a bad bill...
...Here came the hustle...
...By now the House committee leaders were clearly worried...
...In his veto message Ford contended that the bill would add $1.8 billion to the federal deficit, an estimate which supporters of the bill said was another Department of Agriculture phony...
...The committee decided to roll over and play dead, its own special kind of hustle, rather than facing the tough problem of solving world food problems through creation of American grain reserves...
...The unions, said George Meany, would support the bill if the cotton and dairy sections were pruned back, a position identical to that of the Consumer Federation...
...It says simply that cotton is a non-food commodity, and as such is not important to solving the world food problem...
...in 1975 no House committee was more requested than Agriculture...
...In the end it was that reflex action whch sealed the bill’s fate, for it exposed to anyone willing to take a hard look that this was not a serious piece of legislation...
...they gave up nothing in return...
...He supports minimum wage laws, and he is running hard to bring cotton back into the middle of the farm bloc...
...in the end, that is what thc conference did...
...They will look for other issues, smaller bills, to regain their lost prestige, to restore their confidence...
...He helped sponsor legislation blocking the rise in the price of food stamps...
...When George Meany supports a farm bill,” Earl Butz said, “I want to see the fine print...
...The bill was first and most obviously too generous...
...Another “consumer voice” is Margaret Heckler of Massachusetts, who gave up a seat on the Banking Committee to join Agriculture...
...Labor gets farm votes on minimum wage bills, protection on food stamps for strikers, and backing on a few other key issues...
...Weldon V. Barton, now a member of the House Agriculture Committee staff, but until April a lobbyist for the National Farmers Union, explaius it this way: "Farmers have a stake in maintaining legislation to help manage supply and keep prices up...
...Therefore, the theory goes, cotton should not be rewarded through legislation...
...Cotton,” he said one day, “produces more protein in one acre than wheat produces in six...
...Peyser, who represents Westchester County, where the most lucrative cash crop is money itself, had recently signed on with the committee and was preparing to make his bid as a “consumer advocate” on the panel...
...Instead of calculating the cost to the federal treasury, Butz went for the consumer’s jugular...
...But more important, there is fear on the House committee...
...Congress was not even scheduled to debate a farm bill this year...
...The Road to Oblivion Each hustle had begotten another...
...For the consumers, it would mean tolerating somewhat higher food prices, and realizing that the era of cheap food was behnd them...
...The bill raised target prices for wheat from $2.05 a bushel to $3.10...
...It has been easier to blame things on the Russians and the weather, which are expected to be mysterious...
...they gave up nothing in return...
...They called for “maximum production to meet domestic needs and requirements in cases of famine or humanitarian requirements abroad,” which suggested crop surpluses and lower prices on the farm...
...That was shortly after consumers had discovered themselves as a political force...
...There should have been enough time for Congress to think and debate and draft a program which dealt with the realities of U.S...
...On May 1 Ford vetoed the bill, and when Butz met with reporters in the White House press room, he came empty-handed...
...The Senate seemed to consider both the House and Talmadge’s committee cheapskates and approved an amendment sponsored by Lee Metcalf of Montana (for Mike Mansfield, the majority leader) to raise the wheat target from an incredible $3.10 a bushel to an astronomical $3.41...
...But Ford also said the bill would cost not only taxpayers, but farmers and consumers as well, and as vulnerable as those Department estimates may have been, they continued to dance in the minds of those who would have to vote on an override...
...Within a single day they reported out a bill which removed the amendments approved on the House floor...
...Labor has the same stake in minimum wage legislation and legislation to let them bargain...
...The corporate bailouts for Lockheed and the pleas for help from Pan Am are not strictly analogous to the farm bill and minimum-wage legislation, but in all of them ·there is a recognition that being thrown to the mercy of the market has become a dangerous business...
...For the farmers, who have enjoyed some spectacular years lately, good weather meant larger crops, which in turn meant lower prices...
...The world’s food problems concern complex issuesgrain shortages, inadequate and unjust distribution, and production roadblocks abroad-but Congress dealt with things as simply as it could...
...On May 1 Ford vetoed the bill, and when Butz met with reporters in the White House press room, he came empty-handed...
...The consumer vote was disorganized and disoriented and when the vote came, it was 40 votes short of paradise, 245 to 182...
...Poage of Texas, the deposed House Agriculture Committee chairman...
...To urban people, cotton is clearly a pariah,” Foley once said...
...The Consumers League deferred...
...In a year which demanded changes in traditional approaches to farm policy, Congress instinctively looked backward for an answer, for an easy solution...
...the Consumer Federation may get critical votes to override a veto of the bill creating a consumer-protection agency...
...Within a matter of days, Poage’s subcommittee had produced a bill that made traditional farm champions look like pikers...
...The consumers needed protection against similarly sudden price rises in bad crop years...
...The consumers were still to be heard from, and this is where Carol Tucker Foreman became important, and where, from the wings, entered hustle number three...
...for corn, from $1.38 a bushel to $2.25...
...The world’s food problems concern complex issuesgrain shortages, inadequate and unjust distribution, and production roadblocks abroad-but Congress dealt with things as simply as it could...
...Butz had built his career as Secretary by getting farm prices up, but in 1975 he didn’t want to start another round-not just yet at least...
...there would be no announcement of higher loan rates...
...No one could shake the habit of lumping into one farm bill the problems of grains, dairy, and cotton...
...Since losing his chairmanshp, Poage has become head of the Livestock and Grain Subcommittee, the most important of them all...
...It is through Carol Tucker Foreman that the farm-labor-consumer coalition has become part of the political lexicon on farm legislation...
...Barton knew it...
...In the House, several new members of the Agriculture Committee have become self-appointed saviors of the consumers...
...Poage of Texas, the deposed House Agriculture Committee chairman...
...Berkley Bedell, a Democrat from the northwest corner of Iowa, told the full House later what he had found: “The U.S...
...The reason had to do with the man in the labor movement who follows farm legislation most closely, Arnold Mayer, a lobbyist for the Amalgamated Butchers and Meatcutters of America...
...the Consumer Federation may get critical votes to override a veto of the bill creating a consumer-protection agency...
...From the farmers’ point of view, and from the perspective of people worried about world food shortages, the core of the farm bill was the price increases for wheat and corn...
...Not only did it propose to raise the targets a year ahead of schedule, but it also built into them a much higher base for future escalation...
...Even though his free-market rhetoric has gotten the best of him, Butz is one of the last people in the government willing to let farm income fall drastically...
...But many hoped that, for political reasons, Ford and Butz would throw a bone toward the farmers even while rejecting the bill...
...Ford decided eventually that it’s far better to win without having to give up anything...
...Ford and Butz came out winners for another reason...
...the headlines could not be rewritten...
...There was debate, but very little thought, and in understanding why it is important to remember that farm policy still excites people only in the abstract...
...Butz knew it...
...The addition of the consumers also helped spread the germ of another idea which has forced cotton onto the defensive...
...Bowen is a Democrat from Mississippi, now in his second term, who already chairs the cotton sub committee on the House Agriculture Committee...
...He is not a symbol of segregation...
...His purpose was to reach a “consumer position” on some pending legislation...
...And cotton provides the world with six per cent of the world’s protein...
...She became executive director about 18 months ago, at a time when it was beset by internal problems, and has made it one consumer group with political sophistication and a modicum of power...
...He knows that what the world worries about now is food, and he has a reason for the consumers to believe in and help the cotton farmers...
...he worked for the Office of Economic Opportunity...
...The day after the farm bill passed the House, a press release floated out of Bowen’s office hailing the rebirth of the old coalition between Southern and Northern Democrats as saviors of the economy...
...This, plus the noble desire to feed the hungry world, made many people believe that the principal goal in farm policy was to assure all-out overproduction...
...But the emergency farm bill had upset him...
...The day after the farm bill passed the House, a press release floated out of Bowen’s office hailing the rebirth of the old coalition between Southern and Northern Democrats as saviors of tion followed the Department of Agriculture line and opposed it, or that the National Farmers Union, the cagiest of the farm groups, also opposed it, saying it was not generous enough, although they privately hoped desperately for passage...
...It mattered little that the National Farmers Organization endoresed the bill enthusiastically, that the American Farm Bureau Federation followed the Department of Agriculture line and opposed it, or that the National Farmers Union, the cagiest of the farm groups, also opposed it, saying it was not generous enough, although they privately hoped desperately for passage...
...He helped elect one President that way in 1972...
...In short order the bill was on its way to conference, and Earl Butz was yelling veto...
...He is a long-time friend of Carol Foreman, an even better friend of her husband (who is employed by the retail clerks union), and, moreover, sits on the executive committee of the Consumer Federation...
...Bowen used his credentials as a professor of political science to put the stamp of credibility on that press release, but it had a purpose other than historical analysis...
...That scared even Albert Rees, director of the Council on Wage and Price Stability and no expert on agriculture...
...Farm legislation was in the hands of the cotton interests and they had enough support from other representatives, often Republicans from the Midwest, to get the kind of farm programs they wanted...
...By now the House committee leaders were clearly worried...
...Butz hmted that a bone might be on the way, saying that Ford was prepared, if necessary, to increase loan rates if farm prices plunged...
...The action shifted back to the House for the last time...
...This year he could not get his way from Congress, and the veto would be more than a threat...
...Cotton is no longer cotton, in this Bowen hustle, but rather cottonseed meal, a high-protein substance now fed to animals but being adapted for human use...
...Like Foreman, he was bothered by the bill’s generosity and had been scratching his head, looking for an easy way out...
...The reason had to do with the man in the labor movement who follows farm legislation most closely, Arnold Mayer, a lobbyist for the Amalgamated Butchers and Meatcutters of America...
...The most they could hope for was that the conference comnlittee would reject the costly Senate version and go back to the House provision...
...Too Much of a Good Thing The first hustle came from the farmers...
...On that committee, Mayer actually participated in developing the Federation’s position...
...Under Earl Butz, the Agriculture Department had turned into a group of tough, if not always politically wise, poker players...
...Until then, there will be no big farm bill...
...Instead of being 22 votes short of a two-thirds majority, the Housc was now 28 short...
...Foreman decided the Consumer Federation could not endorse the cotton sections...
...But like cotton, the dairy industry has been tarnished by its political contributions and the aggressive economic power of the big co-ops...
...The consumers were still to be heard from, and this is where Carol Tucker Foreman became important, and where, from the wings, entered hustle number three...
...I want to see what deals have been made...
...They still carried the votes, but people with a bent toward consumerism found in cotton a convenient whipping boy...
...Within a single day they reported out a bill which removed the amendments approved on the House floor...
...Bowen’s gambit may become more important in the next few years as he works to restore some of cotton’s image and power in the farm bloc...
...A few days after the Agriculture Committee approved the bill, the Department said if it were passed, within a year the price of milk would rise by eight cents a gallon, the price of cheese by ten cents a pound, and the price of butter by a whopping 20 cents a pound...
...On the floor, John Anderson of Illinois said Ford was still prepared to keep lus eye on farm inconie and loan rates and would not let farms fail...
...The vote in favor was 248 to 166...
...Even though his free-market rhetoric has gotten the best of him, Butz is one of the last people in the government willing to let farm income fall drastically...
...Grain reserves worry Herman Talmadge, and Talmadge was chairman of the committee...
...The farmers needed to be sure that if they produced more to feed the world’s hungry, the bottom would not drop out of the market and suddenly reduce their income...
...Until then, there will be no big farm bill...
...And Foley, the man who had created great expectations, knew he was on the spot...
...And cotton provides the world with six per cent of the world’s protein...
...That is where Dave Bowen and his cotton hustle step in...
...the Oxford in his background is Oxford University in England, where he went after graduation from Harvard...
...Most people presume there is some connection between farm programs and the price and availability of food, but no one really knows what it is, and few have cared enough to pay any serious attention...
...Some of the other proposals, notably the increases for cotton and milk, were appealing to certain narrow political blocs, but would not do much either to protect endangered farmers or to increase world supplies...
...The decision about dairy prices was more difficult, and she agonized for a time over the plight of the little dairymen, who have been losing money in many parts of the country...
...Bowen knew that cotton was in trouble and that the only way it could survive was to make people believe that the old coalition still existed-that the South belonged, and that cotton was still mighty...
...Like other consumer representatives, Foreman was disturbed by the Agriculture Department’s cost estimates...
...and for cotton, from 38 cents a pound to 48 cents...
...This...
...and on the emergency farm bill, Foreman played the pivotal role in advancing the cause of the farm-labor-consumer position...
...Most of the people in the top positions are still so new to national politics that they are intimidated quickly and flattered easily...
...Butz said the Department would keep its eye on milk supports...
...That is where Dave Bowen and his cotton hustle step in...
...The addition of the consumers also helped spread the germ of another idea which has forced cotton onto the defensive...
...A lot of this is exaggerated, but in Washington rumors of power are often as important as power itself...
...Peyser opposed it...
...Cotton,” he said one day, “produces more protein in one acre than wheat produces in six...
...There’s still a touch of Arkansas twang in her voice, still some feel for the country in her soul, but Carol Tucker Foreman is now quite a tough-minded woman...
...But a Library of Congress study estimated in January that in an extremely good year-nearperfect weather and record cropsfarm income could plummet in 1976 to a third of what it had been in 1973...
...He called a press conference to say the bill should be defeated and that it was in the worst interest of the consumer...
...Before Bedell and his friends were able to expose the Department, other minds were made up, and on the basis of some of those decisions, we come to hustle number three...
...Foley’s district in Washington, the fifth, spans the city of Spokane and its suburbs, then spreads west, north, and south through some of the nation’s most productive wheat-growing acreage...
...He supports minimum wage laws, and he is running hard to bring cotton back into the middle of the farm bloc...
...Stating it this way is a little too simple, for the Consumer Federation recommendation did not exactly come as a surprise to Mayer...
...Peter Peyser had made one miscalculation when he sounded the trumpet in December...
Vol. 7 • July 1975 • No. 5
