568 GENERAL FARM PROGRAM 



'We need to have a flexible floor available ; we need to have a fixed 

 floor available ; we nefed to have the 2-price system available ; and we 

 hope your committee gives consideration to the possibility of a wider 

 range for using the 2-price system than we now have, although I doubt 

 if the Congress is going to be able to develop any legislation in this 

 session. However, we need to give it consideration in any long-range 

 program. 



Mr. Sutton. Just this one further que.stion and I will not detain 

 you any further : If we have a flexible price for agricultural surpluses 

 and we have surpluses on all commodities produced on the farm, with 

 the possibility of having more surplus next year, if we have a flexible 

 price support, do you not think that whatever the price support is 

 that is going to be the price of the commodity ? For example in the 

 case of cotton this year with 90-percent parity we were getting 29.6 

 cents, and if it had not been for price support the price would have 

 been 15 to 17 cents per pound. Do you not think what is going to 

 happen next year in the face of our agricultural program, that the 

 price of all commodities is going to be based on the price support? 



Mr. Goss. If your assumption that we are going to have surpluses 

 in all commodities is correct, I think your conclusion is correct, be- 

 cause the purpose of a floor is designed to protect the price from go- 

 ing to an unreasonable level when we get surpluses which drive it 

 in there. We do not believe that you can establish a flexible floor on 

 all commodities; and we do not believe that a flexible floor will work 

 the SRme way on all commodities. As we have already said, we be- 

 lieve that someone must be given the discretion to determine the rate 

 of flexing, because we do not think that you can treat peanuts the 

 same way you do cotton, and we do not think you can treat cotton 

 the same way you do onions. It is a complex problem, too complex 

 to write any formula into one bill for all commodities. 



Mr. Sutton. Thank you, that is all. 



Mr. Pace. Mr. Hope. 



Mr. Hope. Mr. Goss, if I understand the basis for your proposal it 

 is something like this : You feel that the whole problem of supporting 

 agricultural prices, after several years experience in dealing with this 

 problem, is so great and so varied that it can only be done by follow- 

 ing one or two alternatives : One would be to have Congress write into 

 the law in great detail specifically what remedy might be used and 

 how it should be applied and on what commodity it should be used, 

 and all that sort of thing. 



The other would be to authorize the use of certain remedies and 

 turn the power over to the Secretary of Agriculture and not attempt 

 to write the law that goes into detail and that specifies its application. 



In one case, where you had the Congress write out the details you 

 would probably have to be modifying them all of the time, and we 

 would probably have legislation that is quite unworkable in many 

 cases and the law would have to be modified. I am thinking, for in- 

 stance, of the changes that we have had to make in the Triple-A Act 

 of 1938 just for cotton alone ; we have written dozens of changes into 

 the law as it applies to cotton; and we have changed the law as it 

 applies to tobacco many times, and we have made changes for prac- 

 tically all commodities. 



But most changes I think have to do with two things: That we 

 have had many programs involving acreage allotments, marketing 



