Ethanol make greenies of all political parties feel good. The program fleeces the taxpayer, it gouges the consumer and ultimately will have little to no positive effect on our energy independence.
Ethanol is merely a not very efficient method of turning solar energy into liquid fuel. The article uncited reference to ethanol needing more energy to produce than it contains is almost certainly the result of bad numbers and/or old numbers (probably both). Even the backers of ethanol only claim that they get 1.6 units of energy for every one unit of non-solar energy. There are several much more efficient methods to produce transportable fuel from solar energy. The ones that I know about are bio-diesel (probably only a niche fuel in the end); Hydrogen; and butanol if you believe BP's press releases.