The Key West Citizen

Ellender Sees Dangers In Budget Plans
By JOE HALL

WASHINGTON-Sen. Ellender (D-La) says that it appears to him the administration may be trying to "balance the budget on paper by underestimating farm price support costs in the next year."

President Eisenhower, in his budget sent to Congress Monday, estimated price support losses for the bookkeeping year which starts next July 1 at $1,591,000,000.

This is 485 million less than the estimated losses for the current year.

The over-all surplus predicted by the President for the coming year was $435 million. It thus could be wiped out if farm price supports cost as much as is estimated this year.

Ellender told a reporter he supposed the Agriculture Department was guessing that the milk program and others responsible for heavy farm price support losses in the past would "work better next year."

"But I doubt if they will," he said. "It seems to me the losses are going to be about as big next year as in the past year."

In testimony prepared for the Senate Agriculture Committee, Sen. Capehart (R-Ind) urged creation of an agency to get rid of the more than eight billion dollars of government-held farm surpluses, through gifts if necessary.

Congress must do something about "the desperate plight of the American farmer," he said, adding "It is my firm conviction that the single most direct cause of the current unreasonably low farm prices is the huge inventories of government-owned or pledged farm surpluses that currently overhang the market."

He said "there are millions of underfed and underclothed people" in the free world "who desperately need the surplus commodities that have created so unfortunate an economic problem for us."

The committee plans a week of hearings on the farm problem, then has promised to go to work promptly to write a bill.