I have long maintained our biofuel mandates have become unrealistic and drive up the cost of our food and feed. I commend Senator Coburn’s amendment to end the tax breaks and subsidies for ethanol. Using food and feed for fuel is like busting up your furniture to put in your wood stove to heat your home and wonder why you are sitting on the floor.
Senate fails to halt ethanol tax breaks
CNN
Charles Riley
June 14, 2011
Ethanol subsidies are still alive and kickin’.
The Senate rejected an amendment Tuesday that would have put an abrupt stop to tax breaks and incentives for corn-based ethanol products popular with farm-state lawmakers.
Introduced by Sen. Tom Coburn, a cantankerous Oklahoman known as “Dr. No,” the amendment fell short, failing in a 40-to-59 procedural vote as members of both parties joined in opposition to the measure. Sixty votes were needed for passage.
Coburn, a conservative Republican, framed the elimination of ethanol subsidies as a responsible way to cut the nation’s deficit, and found himself allied with some unusual bedfellows: environmentalists.
“Eliminating the ethanol tax earmark and tariff would be a big step toward restoring fiscal sanity in Washington,” Coburn said in a statement. “Ethanol is bad economic policy, bad energy policy and bad environmental policy.”
Environmental advocates have long questioned the ecological benefit of ethanol, which is blended with gasoline, claiming that it takes as much energy to produce as it yields.
The federal tax subsidy, currently 45 cents a gallon, expires on Dec. 31. Given the current cost-cutting mood in Washington, locking down an extension is far from certain despite the strong support it enjoys from powerful farm-state lawmakers.
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