Word: freeman
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...ever-rising productivity of the U.S. farmer. "Why don't they leave us alone?" cries Shuman. "Why don't they get out and let the farmers run their own business?" By "they" he means Congress, the army of Government farm experts commanded by Agriculture Secretary Orville Freeman, and what Shuman calls the "crazy-quilt patchwork of stopgap farm programs"-all hopelessly complex, all composted of political expediency, and all, in Shuman's view, a complete failure...
...Freeman explained it, he was merely defending the Great Society against "aggressive, go-for-broke special interests." Specifically, he was battling for a new, cash-enriched farm bill whose most controversial provision was a 50?-per-bushel increase (to $1.25) in the special subsidy paid to farmers for high-grade domestically consumed wheat. The only snag was Freeman's notion that wheat processors should subsidize the increased subsidy by paying the entire 500 increase themselves...
...Freeman fought back tooth and nail, wrote to every member of Congress, and denounced "the most bitter, most irresponsible, and most heavily financed attack ever aimed at farm and food legislation." Many Congressmen, while naturally leary of supporting anything that smacked of a bread tax, were al most as perturbed by Orville's increasingly vindictive attitude toward the baking industry. "We should bear in mind," cautioned Illinois' Republican Representative Paul Fintlley, "that Secretary Freeman's office often becomes a propaganda mill and his statements are not always reliable...
Expendable Item. Administration officials also became fearful that the wheat issue might jeopardize the entire farm bill. Freeman took a count of the House, claimed that 210 members-only eight short of an absolute majority−would vote for the bill as it stood. In more objective surveys, House Majority Leader Carl Albert and White House Legislative Aide Larry O'Brien both realized that the bread-tax issue would cause major defections; they figured 170 votes for the bill at most. As Massachusetts Democrat Thomas O'Neill said: "I do not intend to reduce the excise taxes...
...lose a farm bill over this one item would be stupid," reasoned a top House Democratic leader, and the party's high command agreed. So on the eve of the farm-bill debate, Freeman got the news. Instead of saddling millers and bakers−and housewives−with the subsidy, the Government would foot the bill. The cost: between $150 million and $250 million a year. The House then passed the bill, 221 to 172, and sent it to the Senate...