Word: wool
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Harry Truman sent his fifth veto* to the 80th Congress last week. This time it was the wool bill...
...President himself had recommended a straight price-support program for domestic wool-growers, to replace the old program, which was terminated April 15. Congress had drawn up a bill along those lines, then loaded it down with amendments. Majority Leader Charley Halleck had tacked on provisions for import fees and import quotas to be imposed when the President "has reason to believe" that the inflow of foreign wool is harmful to U.S. sheepmen. Specifically because of that amendment the President vetoed...
...Wool-growing is a small, uneconomical U.S. industry, but it has many political friends in Congress as well as the White House. When the clerk finished reading the President's message, the Senate swung into action. With the whole wool price-support program in danger, there was no time for dillydallying. The Senate whipped out a bill conforming to Harry Truman's specifications, in less than four hours cleared it from committee, then debated and passed it with a ringing voice vote...
...original version of the bill called for a continuation of present wool subsidies till 1948, and the sale of 500 million pounds of wool accumulated by the government at war-profits prices. Dissatisfied with these provisions the House has written in an amendment raising import fees (and therefore prices), and calling for restrictions of wool imports. Thus is spelled out in sober measures what is, in short, an excellent deal for the American wool growers. The value of the amendment to the American consumer, and to the maintenance of world economy, is more difficult to discern...
...therefore laudable. The effect of his veto is likely to be the elimination of the import-fee amendment, and the final shifting of the burden to the Treasury. This act of sweeping the business out of public sight under the rug would obviously be no final answer to the wool wrangle. It would at least, though, spare America the irony of talking world stability up big at Geneva, while at the same time giving it a kick in the stomach long-distance from Washington...