GENE RAJj FARM PROGRAM 1251 



income is allowed to hit the toboggan it is not long before our entire 

 economy goes into a tailspin. 



Mr. Murray. Will the gentleman yield? 



Mr. Pace. Does that complete your statement, Mr. Slocum? 



Mr. Si,ocuM. Yes, sir. 



Mr. Murray. Do I understand that you say that under the Aiken 

 bill the eggs and these other so-called basic commodities have a 

 support from zero up to 90 percent? 



Mr. Slocum. That is correct. 



Mr. Murray. That is the way I understand it, too. I do not 

 think anyone should have that much power, so I did not sign the 

 conference report last year. The reason I did not is because T do not 

 have that much confidence in the Secretary of Agriculture, and evi- 

 dently, you do not. You do not have much confidence in the present 

 Secretary of Agriculture. If I were going to give wholehearted support 

 to his program, I surely would not leave the inference that 1 did not 

 have confidence in him, that he would make the 90-percent support. 



Mr. Slocum. This is not a question of the Secretary of Agriculture. 

 This is a question of the law. 



Mr. Murray. Oh, no, if the Secretary of Agriculture wants to give 

 you 90 percent the 1st day of next January, he can give you 90, can 

 he not, the same as you are getting today? 



Mr. Slocum. But on a revised base, sir. 



Mr. Murray. No; there is no revision to it. That is discretionary 

 on his part, not mandatory. 



Mr. Pace. When he says revised, he means the parity formula 

 would kick the parity price 'of eggs down. 



Mr. Slocum. That is correct, sir. 



Mr. Murray. But he still has the power to raise it up if he wants 

 to under the Aiken bill. 



Mr. Slocum. But he cannot. There still remains that cut of 8 

 cents a dozen due to the change in parity base. 



Mr. Murray. Let us keep it straight. He still has that power 

 under the Aiken bill. 



Mr. Pace. Let us get that straight, too, Mr. Slocum. I do not 

 think that under the Aiken law next year the Secretary can support 

 eggs at all because the law expressly says he shall not support any 

 commodity that is perishable in nature that is either nonstorable or 

 where the storage is expensive. Certainly we agree that eggs are 

 perishable, do we not? Certainly we agree that they would have to 

 be stored or they would have to be processed. 



Mr. Slocum. That is right. 



Mr. Pace. It is my construction of the testimony of the Secretary 

 Monday morning that he .could not support the price of eggs or the 

 price of hogs or the price of cattle under the Aiken law. 



Mr. Murray. That might be true, Mr. Chairman, but they surely 

 shifted that pretty fast, too. On March 18, 1949, I asked the Solicitor 

 of the Department of Agriculture that question. The gentleman 

 from Georgia himself tried to interpret it for him but did not make it 

 very plain to him. The gentleman from Georgia said, "What you 

 intended to say, I believe, Mr. Hunter, is that the support price would 

 be entirely within the discretion of the Secretary from zero to 90 per- 

 cent of parity." Mr. Hunter said, "That is right." 



