(2 of 2)
"The Chair Votes Aye." On the second key vote, to fix the support level on wheat, pressures from the stubbles cut hard into the Administration's ranks. Six farm belt Republicans (Colorado's Allott, Kansas' Carlson and Schoeppel, Nebraska's Curtis and Hruska, Wisconsin's Wiley) who had voted for flexible supports on the other basic crops, ran for cover and plumped for rigid props under wheat. Five Senators (Democrats Byrd of Virginia, Neely of
West Virginia and Smathers of Florida; Republicans Millikin and McCarthy) failed to respond to the roll call.
At first the wheat support vote was tallied as 46 for flexible supports and 45 against. Then the Senate went through the parliamentary maneuver of confirming the vote (a motion to reconsider and table), which Administration forces won handily. At that point, however, Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson rose to say that his tally of the vote on the original motion did not agree with the official figure. In the midst of the roll call, Johnson had persuaded Rhode Island's Democratic Senator Theodore Green to switch his vote from flexible to rigid. In the confusion the tally clerk counted Green on both sides. With Green properly recorded, the vote was 45-45.
As Vice President Richard Nixon announced the tie, Tennessee's Democratic Senator Albert Gore, a proponent of rigid supports, was on his feet contending that the Vice President could not vote because the motion to reconsider had already been tabled. Said Nixon: "If the Senator will read the Constitution he will find that the Vice President has the right to vote when a tie occurs. The chair votes aye."
With that, the Administration harvested a healthy first crop in the farm policy fight. But the Senate still has to plow its way through 70-odd proposed amendments to the farm bill, and then the bill has to go to conference, where it will be up against a rigid support bill passed by the House last year. At week's end, Secretary Benson was prodding Congress to hurry the bill through so the widely favored soil bank plan will put some money into farmers' pockets this year.
Throughout the battle Ezra Taft Benson had conducted himself with great tactical skill. Behind the skill lay the strategy of principle firmly held and forcefully advocated.
* The last previous full vote came on Jan. 27, 1936, when the Senate voted, 76-19, to override Franklin Delano Roosevelt's veto of the soldier bonus bill. The one vacancy in the Senate at that time was caused by the assassination of Louisiana Democrat Huey Long; the present vacancy was caused by the death of West Virginia Democrat Harley Kilgore.