FROM THE NEVADA STATE JOURNAL, MARCH 7, 1956

FLEXIBLE SUPPORT BACKING CLAIMED

GOP leader predicts Senate to kill rigid price props in vote.

A new farm bill was in the news 50 years ago just as it is today. Click on image to enlarge article.

Washington, March 6 (UP) - Republican legislative leaders told President Eisenhower today they are confident Congress will pass a farm bill that continues the administration-backed flexible price support system.

The farm bill outlook was the main topic at Mr. Eisenhower's weekly White House conference with GOP leaders of the House and Senate.

Senate GOP Leader William F. Knowland said he told the President he expects the Senate to complete action on the farm bill this week. He predicted that administration forces will succeed in knocking out a provision, strongly backed by the Senate farm bloc to restore rigid high price supports.

Sen. George D. Aitken (R-Vt.) ranking Republican member of the Senate Agriculture Committee had forecast to reporters earlier that Mr. Eisenhower would veto the farm bill if it provided for a return to rigid high supports.

Leaders of both parties were satisfied that the Senate would vote overwhelmingly in favor of the other section of the farm bill, which authorizes the administration's $1.1 billion "Soil Bank" program of taking surplus crop lands out of cultivation.

Voting on the bill begins Thursday.

Knowland said the talks centered on the farm bill and did not take up other pending matters such as foreign trade, foreign aid, the school construction bill or the revised Constitutional amendment to alter the president's treaty-making powers.