Consumer Group Study of Legislative Records : Dairy Votes, PAC Money Linked

House members were more attentive to the dairy industry than to their own constituents the last time they voted on major milk price-support legislation, a consumer nutrition group said Sunday.

Public Voice for Food and Health Policy analyzed campaign donations to House members from political action committees representing the nation’s three largest dairy cooperatives.

The group’s report said even House members with virtually no milk production in their districts were more likely to support the milk industry’s position if they received more than $1,000 in campaign contributions than those who received smaller donations.

“Some members of Congress favor cows over consumers, even when their districts don’t have any cows,” said Ellen Haas, the group’s director. “The study really gives more evidence of the direct relationship” between campaign money and votes, she said.

The study correlates campaign giving, gleaned from Federal Election Commission reports, with milk production data from the Census of Agriculture and House members’ votes Nov. 9, 1983, on an attempt to cut dairy price supports. High price supports drive up the cost of dairy products to consumers.

The move to cut dairy price supports, intended to head off an industry “diversion” plan to pay farmers not to produce milk, failed by a vote of 250 to 174.

The industry plan later prevailed as part of a dairy-tobacco bill, and there has been no dairy vote since on the House floor, the group said. Dairy groups have won inclusion of a new paid diversion provision in the House version of a 1985 farm bill expected later this year.

Political action committees representing the interests of the nation’s three major dairy cooperatives--Associated Milk Producers, Mid-America Dairymen and Dairymen Inc.--gave $1.3 billion to House members in the years just before and just after the vote, Public Voice noted.

The 231 members who then voted for the dairy industry’s position and are still in Congress received 97% of the money, averaging $5,592 each, the group found. The 151 current members who voted what Public Voice deemed the “pro-consumer” position received an average $218 apiece.

Haas said she believed that the most interesting finding was in districts where the census shows there is no commercial milk production. There, 37 House members who received more than $1,000 voted the industry position, while only one opposed it. Members from such districts who got less than $1,000 voted 51-22 against.

Among those getting the heaviest dairy support in that category were Democratic Reps. Martin Frost, whose suburban Dallas district has a heavy concentration of black and Hispanic residents, and Alan Wheat, whose district includes downtown Kansas City, Mo.

Both Frost, who got $12,500 in industry money, and Wheat, who got $10,000, are members of the House Rules Committee.

The pattern was true of congressional districts with low, medium and high levels of milk production as well, the study found. In those categories, House members receiving more than $1,000 in dairy money voted the industry position 96%, 94% and 95% of the time. Those receiving less than $1,000 cast pro-industry votes 10%, 21% and 10% of the time.