This is Congressman Bob Dole with my weekly radio report from Washington. Again, I would certainly thank this station for carrying my weekly program as a public service broadcast.

I think one of the matters that would be of interest — and should be of interest — to everyone in the First District of Kansas is a pending legislation which would include agricultural labor under the Fair Labor Standards Act. And of course, at the very time that we're talking about the dwindling farm income, and the fact that the farm debt is rising and rising and RISING, and that farmers more and more are living off of credit rather than income, it seems unfortunate to many of us that we talk now about imposing the minimum wage law upon many farmers who probably earned less themselves than the law would specify they must pay their employees.

Now, certainly Kansas farmers have no quarrel with a living wage, but I do feel that at the very time we talk about the plight of the American farmer, and the fact, as I said before, that he is existing on credit rather than income, that it's unfortunate that we should even discuss a bill that would include farm labor under a minimum wage. It would be $1.15 per hour starting July 1, 1966, and then go to $1.25 in July of 1968. The ten Republican Members, I might add, on the House Agriculture Committee — ten of the eleven Republicans — this week wrote a letter to Secretary [of Agriculture Orville] Freeman. Because during all the hearings in the education and labor subcommittee on minimum wage, Mr. Freeman, who is supposedly the spokesman for agriculture, didn't make a single appearance, and he hasn't made a single public statement about what this would do to farmers. So, we've attempted to encourage Mr. Freeman to speak out. He is the Secretary of Agriculture. He does represent the American farmer. He is the spokesman for the American farmer. And he knows — and of course, has a vast research department who can furnish him with the information that, particularly, at this time, the very idea — the very thought — of imposing the Fair Labor Standards Act upon the farmer — insofar as minimum wages are concerned — needs very careful review and very careful consideration. And we're hopeful that if nothing else will happen, that at least the secretary will join us in postponing any action on this bill until sometime next year, until farm representatives and farm organizations can testify as to the need for this legislation, and secondly, the real plight of the American farmer.

I would also point out this week I was privileged to be appointed to a second committee. I am now a member of the Committee on Agriculture, and last week was appointed to membership on the Committee on Government Operations. And I feel this is a privilege and it will work together with my agriculture assignment, and the Government Operations Committee, frankly, is an investigating committee. There are several subcommittees, and I've made application to be on the Military Operation Subcommittee, and also the Intergovernmental Affairs Subcommittee — and I might point out that this particular subcommittee has jurisdiction over certain problems in the Department of Agriculture, the Federal Crop Insurance Agency, and other agencies that are directly related to the problems in our district, both in agriculture and the oil industry, milling and the grain industry, and many other phases. So I believe that membership on this committee will be a benefit to me, and I hope, may be a benefit to the people in my district.

Now, we still have a lot of talk about when will Congress adjourn, and I have said this so often that perhaps that it need not be repeated, but it seems to me that we still have not taken action on the most important domestic issue in our time, and this is the issue of legislative reapportionment. Now you may have read or may have heard or may have seen on television a lot of talk recently about what they call, ‘nome rule for... [Recording incomplete]