Curdled Milk

"When Benson went to Europe," thundered Republican Congressman Usher Burdick last week, "we made a mistake by buying him a return ticket." Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson had curdled North Dakota's Burdick by announcing that federal price supports on milk and butterfat would be cut to the legal minimum, 75% of parity, on April 1. Current support levels: 83% for milk, 80% for butterfat. The cuts were needed, explained Benson, to shrink the "incentive for excessive production."

Production had been excessive, all right. Outlays for dairy-product supports jumped 20% this year. Piled up in federal storage depots as of Dec. 1 were 12,500 tons of dried milk, 17,000 tons of butter, 89,000 tons of cheese. But politicos from dairy-farm states predictably joined Republican Burdick in bipartisan booing at Benson's announcement. ''A shocking injustice!" cried Wisconsin Democrat William Proxmire. "A mistake!" snapped Vermont Republican George Aiken, an old Benson defender. Said Minnesota Democrat Hubert Humphrey: "Mr. Benson has taken the place of Scrooge."

There was no longer much doubt that harried Ezra Benson is going to run up against sharp pitchforks on Capitol Hill in the session just ahead. The Agriculture Department predicted last week that, with improved moisture conditions in prospect, 1958's winter wheat harvest will run a glutting 28% bigger than 1957's. But far from taking the wheat forecast as further evidence that the high price-support approach has failed (TIME, Dec. 23), Chairman Harold D. Cooley of the House Agriculture Committee declared that Benson "won't get to first base" with his proposal to lower the support floor under basic crops from 75% of parity to 60%. Instead, vowed North Carolinian Cooley, Democrats will push for a return to rigid 90% supports--a tried-and-true method of boosting farm surpluses.

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