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Show 5tion or repair, sawmill workers where fewer than 12 persons work, employees of cotton seed mills in counties where cotton is raised. Sen. Scott Lucas of Illinois, majority ma-jority floor leader, again was optimistic opti-mistic about an early adjournment. He has a list of "must" bills however how-ever which include the military aid program, liberalization of the displaced persons act, the new farm program, pay raises for government gov-ernment officials, military pay raise and repeal of oleo taxes. Also on the list is the log jam of appropriation ap-propriation bills. Of 15 appropriation appropria-tion bills passed by the house, nine have been sent to the President, but six remain awaiting action. Five of these are stalled in conference con-ference and one of them, the army civil functions bill, has been in conference since June. Also before Labor day adjournment adjourn-ment the senate finally passed the military appropriations bill after slashing a billion dollars from the house version. Total is now $12,-731.834,478. $12,-731.834,478. The cut was achieved largely by reducing outlay for the air force to provide for a 48 combat com-bat group force instead of 58 groups as in the house .bill and by giving the defense secretary discretionary dis-cretionary powers to reduce expenditures ex-penditures on his own by about a half billion dollars. The senate defeated de-feated the rider which would have provided the president make an overall budget cut of 5 to 10 per cent and eliminated a long-standing ban against the use of oleo for other than cooking purposes in military establishments. This latter lat-ter was considered a decisive defeat de-feat for the milk producers association assoc-iation and a signal victory for the oleo people. Hearing on the five per center investigation brought out no new damaging testimony. Debate over extension of the reciprocal re-ciprocal trade agreements received top billing in the senate this week, and with legislation at a standstill in the house, vacationing until Sept. 21, little definite action was in the immediate offing. The compromise farm bill, offered of-fered by Sen. Clint Anderson of New Mexico, appeared to have bipartisan bi-partisan support, and even Senator Sena-tor Aitken of Vermont, author of the Aitken law, appeared to be willing that his law should go out the window without taking effect. Effective date of the Aiitken law was January, 1, 1950. Republicans in both house and senate breathed a sigh of relieif when administration forces agreed to support the Anderson bill with a lower parity support than the house-passed Gore bill. Reason is that farm prices will take a dip this fall and the Aitken law would have meant lower farm s prices. Thus, with farm states already off the reservation insofar as the Republicans Re-publicans are concerned, they were eager to take the Anderson bill and fight out the issue in the coming com-ing campaign on the Brannan program, which is not dead by a long shot. Every poll, including the Gallup poll, which has been taken indicates indi-cates that a majority of farmers favor the Brannan plan, even though leaders of farm organizations organiza-tions have taken a stand against the proposal. Debate on the reciprocal trade extension will take two to three weeks with the Republican members mem-bers determined to place strings on the president's authority under the measure. Democrats are standing fast on extension of the law as is. Before adjournment for the Labor La-bor day holiday, the senate enacted en-acted a watered down minimum wage bill, raising the minimum to 75 cents an hour, but removing an estimated 200,000 persons from its provisions. The house bill already al-ready had removed about a million workers from coverage by the measure. So it's a half-way victory for the administration. Most exemptions came as a result re-sult of an amendment offered by Sen. Spessard Holland of Florida and include removal of most retail and service workers. Senator Holland's Hol-land's colleague. Sen. Claude Pepper Pep-per of Florida, led the fight against again-st the amendment. The bill now goes to conference. In addition to the Holland amendment, the following exemptions exemp-tions were voted: Western Union messengers, workers on maintenance mainten-ance of reservoirs or waterways not operated for profit, newsboys, switchboard operators in telephone exchanges with not more than 750 stations, workers in establishments selling goods to be used m residential resi-dential or farm building construe- |