Free Republic

Following a meeting with President Barack Obama's top energy adviser, Minnesota Senator Al Franken on Thursday said he believes the Environmental Protection Agency will raise its biofuels blending targets when it finalizes the 2014 Renewable Fuel Standard. "We are hoping for and we definitely believe we're going to get higher numbers than in the preliminary rule, and we hope they're significantly higher," Franken said on a conference call with reporters. Franken and eight other Democratic senators met with Obama adviser John Podesta to discuss the biodiesel mandate within the 2014 RFS, though Franken said ethanol issues came up, as well....

USDA-backed biofuels plant in Soperton, Georgia has lost taxpayers nearly $60 millionWASHINGTON D.C.—Upon reports Tuesday that a USDA-backed biofuels plant in Soperton, Georgia has lost taxpayers nearly $60 million, IER President Tom Pyleissued the following statement:“Apparently U.S. taxpayers have yet to discover life after Solyndra. Today’s announcement that a USDA-backed biofuels plant has been sold for pennies on the dollar—at a loss of nearly $60 million to U.S. taxpayers —further underscores the point that the federal government should not be in the venture capital business.The Bush administration secured the Range Fuels loan, and the Obama administration doubled down on the...

Senate Democrats are making hay today with yesterdays' vote by a majority of Senate Republicans to repeal the tax credit for ethanol in defiance of Grover Norquist's "Taxpayer Protection Pledge." Here's the e-mail blast from Chuck Schumer and Bob Menendez, with a conference call coming: "In Watershed Moment, 34 Senate Republicans Broke With Right Wing Ideology Yesterday -- Vote Means Tax Expenditures Now Fair Game To Reduce Deficit...Schumer, Menendez to Call Yesterday’s Vote 'Sea Change' That Will Boost Movement to Finally End Wasteful Oil and Gas Subsidies." They are correct. The vote breaks GOP orthodoxy that for decades has pretended...

Sarah Palin was asked Tuesday about the sticky subject of ethanol subsidies, and she said that not only they should they be squelched but that all federal energy subsidies should be eradicated. "I think that all of our energy subsidies need to be relooked at today and eliminated," Palin told Real Clear Politics at a coffee shop in Dillsburg, Pa. "And we need to make sure that we're investing and allowing our businesses to invest in reliable energy products right now that aren't going to necessitate subsidies because, bottom line, we can't afford it." Ever the maverick, Palin was responding...

Last month, when the conservative Republican Study Committee released its plan for $2.5 trillion in budget cuts over the next ten years, one enormous item of wasteful government spending was conspicuously missing — farm subsidies. Perhaps that reflects the fact that 24 of the RSC’s 165 members sit on the House Agriculture Committee, the notorious overseer of farm-welfare programs. Total direct government farm payments to the districts of those 24 representatives alone costs taxpayers more than $1 billion per year. Numerous other RSC members hail from farm states, and therefore have a vested interest in protecting payments to their constituents....

Washington (CNSNews.com) – Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack says he welcomes the extension of the energy policy requiring the extension of tax credits and protective tariffs of corn ethanol and is not worried in the long term about the U.S. economy’s capacity to produce corn for food, fuel, feed, and exports because of it.“I’m certainly not worried in the long term about our capacity to produce enough corn to meet our food and feed needs as well as our fuel needs,” Secretary Vilsack said Wednesday in a news conference with Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Energy Secretary Steven Chu held...

Energy Policy: If we're serious about cutting wasteful spending and reining in government, the abolition of subsidies for ethanol production and the ending of mandates for its use would be a good place to start. The Bush tax cuts aren't the only thing that expires at the end of the year. Also set to expire is the mother of all corporate welfare: ethanol subsidies to Big Agriculture coupled with tariffs protecting domestic ethanol production that benefit farm-state senators and congressmen but few others. Ethanol is the perfect tax-spend-and-elect mechanism. Illinois-based Archer Daniels Midland, the nation's second-largest ethanol producer, has operations...

Earlier this year, the Environmental Protection Agency issued another one of those announcements read exclusively by government bureaucrats and green policy wonks. The EPA decided to delay a decision to increase the concentration of ethanol legal in gasoline from 10% to 15%. So-called E15 fuel would have to wait for approval until November. It was a little-read regulatory decision that barely made a splash in the media. But it was also a rock thrown at Washington's hornets' nest of food and agricultural lobbyists. "We are disappointed," warned food giant Archer Daniels Midland. "We find this further delay unacceptable" and a...