624

AGRICULTURAL RELIEF
Congress ‘we would have a mollycoddle mess of laws and legislation
here that would not be in keeping with the great country we represent.

For my part, I do not propose to come here and argue with you
gentlemen about the Haugen bill you are going to report out. You
have heard all this testimony. It has not been my pleasure to be
here. But the thing I want to impress upon you is this: To pass
legislation that will bé enacted into law at this session. If you find
you have made mistakes, and you are bound to find some mistakes
in any of this legislation, then you can correct them later.

If I was an opponent of the equalization fee—and I believed that
the legislation with the equalization fee could be passed immediately
and approved, although I was an opponent to the equalization fee 1
would vote for it in order to get the legislation. That is my stand
here; and that is just exactly how I feel about it, because if the
equalization fee did not prove satisfactory we could repeal it and, on
the other hand, if we passed it without the equalization fee and found
it does not work you can put the equalization fee into legislation.

I have just this suggestion to make: If you do not take the deben-

ture plan—and I always favored the Haugen bill; I still favor the
Haugen bill—instead of making a direct appropriation of $400,000,000
in this bill, it would be my judgment to authorize the Secretary of the
Treasury to issue his certificates to get whatever money the board
might require when operating upon any particular nonperishable
product—when it comes to nonperishable products; and then when
the board has taken this surplus off and held it until the market shall
have consumed it, they can return to the Treasury the money used,
and thereby you do not have to come to Congress every time to get
an appropriation; you do not have to come to Congress every time
to have a bill passed. You have a permanent and working scheme
that has already been put into law; and that is the objection, as I
understand, to the proposition of leaving out the equalization fee;
that you get the board, you get your money and then after a while
you have to come back to Congress again. But if you will put an
automatic, workable provision in there that the Secreatry of the
Treasury, upon the call of the board, may issue his certificates and
furnish the money required in that particular emergency, to be repaid
on nonperishable articles as secured in the market and returned to
the Treasury, it seems to me, gentlemen, that then you have set up
a permanent arrangement.

You can go ahead, report the bill out with the equalization fee;
and then, they argue, if you do that, why, then Congress can run in
here and pass another bill. Why, gentlemen, you see how long it
has taken you now to get this bill out. Then where is the argument?
If you adjourn anywhere in June, do you think you will be able to
get in and pass another bill? And what kind of shape is the fellow
going to be in who votes for a bill to be vetoed. In my own Demo-
cratic country where I come from there are hundreds of Democrats
down there who still think that the President may be right about
the proposition, and they differed with me when I said it was con-
stitutional—if you have to go in a Democratic country, what will
it do in a country of the Congressman’s own political persuasion as
to the question of the constitutionality of this bill?

_ If you are going to pass the bill, and should the President approve

it, then you have got to have two years’ litigation in the courts to