Statement by Senator John F. Kennedy Upon Passage of the Kennedy-Proxmire Bill Increasing Dairy Support

Once again the Democratic Congress has acted to relieve farmers of some of the pressures resulting from increasing costs and falling prices. Today the House passed the Proxmire-Kennedy bill increasing price supports for manufacturing milk from $3.06, per hundredweight, to $3.22 and for butterfat from 56.6 cents per pound to 59.6 cents. If the usual pattern of the past 7 1/2 years prevails, the bill will be vetoed. If it is signed, it will be the first time that a bill which raises farm price supports has not been vetoed since 1952.

The bill will save dairy farmers from a potential $180 million annual loss of income.

A Democratic administration will guarantee that this will be but the first in a long - and long overdue - series of measures to be enacted into law which will give American farmers what they have not had in recent years: prices and income which are comparable to those received by other segments of our economy and in keeping with the farmers' contributions to our national welfare.