Posted on 12/30/2015 5:05:11 PM PST by iowamark
The recent editorial by Douglas Burns on the Texas connection between Ted Cruz and Congressman Steve King missed the mark on several important points as it relates to ethanol.
Senator Cruz’ opposition to the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) is, as the author points out, based on “ideological rigidity, an unbudging conservatism and refusal to break from his own established boundaries of where the government should and shouldn’t go.†Does that make him anti-ethanol? I suppose if the RFS was the sole measuring stick, then perhaps.
But a fundamental misunderstanding regarding Cruz is the accusation that he completely dismisses ethanol and has not taken the time to understand it. Mr. Burns states the senator won’t even meet with industry leaders. As an Iowa native directly involved in the industry and having built many of the plants in Iowa, I have had numerous personal meetings with Senator Cruz in an effort to get him to support ethanol. From those meetings a different picture emerges, and it is not the anti-ethanol demon he has been cast as.
Anti-RFS? Yes.
Anti-ethanol? Not at all.
Anyone who thinks the two are inseparable may not be seeing the big picture for ethanol, or understand what is really going to determine our fate.
In fact, I have had numerous positive discussions with the senator helping him to see that the real challenge for ethanol is getting access to the consumer through a fair and open market.
The RFS began that process to some degree, but the true obstacles lie within the Environmental Protection Agency and the regulatory roadblocks they have put before us. Mr. Burns’ observation that Senator Cruz has a vision of what the government should and shouldn’t do is accurate, but at the same time Senator Cruz has agreed that the government shouldn’t limit our access to the market through unfair and arbitrary regulations. Similarly, he opposes oil subsidies and is pushing for their elimination.
Eliminating unreasonable and unfair caps on the blend rate. Removing government restrictions that artificially limit market demand for E15 and E30 blends. Ending Catch-22 regulations that nonsensically prevent mid-level blends from serving as test fuels. These are all ideas Cruz has indicated a willingness to work with us on.
The fact of the matter is that the RFS is not going to drive demand from here on.
We are at 96 percent of the allowable volume for corn ethanol under the RFS, and we simply must create new values and pathways.
All we want to do is be able to compete in a free market and allow the consumer to choose the fuels they would like.
The RFS from here on does nothing to ensure that.
Eliminating the regulations that are holding us back opens a market three times bigger than the RFS, and I submit that Senator Cruz just may be the most enlightened, forward-thinking ally ethanol has.
The use of ethanol should be a choice not a mandate!
(Personally, I choose Irish ethanol.)
Gas for my SI IC engines, Ethanol for medicinal purposes.
I don’t want ethanol in gasoline anywhere near my small power equipment (principally chainsaws). As a result I’m paying over $10/gallon for 98 octane non-ethanol fuels.
Sounds good. Free market. Conservatism. Liberty.
Great, I agree completely. So, when will Cruz stand up and demand an end to subsidies to the oil and gas industry?
So, yes, it'll be interesting.
With oil so cheap, ethanol subsidies are a terrible waste.
"So, when will Cruz stand up and demand an end to subsidies to the oil and gas industry?"
Oh, any minute now. /sarc
Excerpt: “We appreciate America’s Renewable Future’s [ethanol advocate group] focus on fairness and market competition and welcome their endorsement of Ted Cruz’s Simple Flat Tax Plan which eliminates all energy subsidies....”
“His plan eliminates all loopholes, stops corporate welfare, and specifically allows every company, including ethanol producers, to immediately expense all of their capital costs, treating everyone fairly, without subsidy. Ted Cruz believes the tax code shouldn’t pick winners or losers in the market and that all industries should compete on a level playing field.”
...Cruz spokeswoman Catherine Frazier fired back: “Cruz has consistently supported ending subsidies across all energy sectors, and his tax plan would do just that.”
“All that remains in terms of subsidies/exemptions in his tax plan are the Child Tax Credit and the Earned Income Tax Credit, as well as existing deductions for charitable contributions and mortgage interest payments”, she said.
...”Cruz’s tax plan also allows every company, including ethanol producers, to immediately expense all of their capital costs — treating everyone fairly, without subsidy.”
Yeah, they may be the worlds producer of corn based ethanol,but corn is not a good plant to use for it. The return on investment is poor. Time to change to switch grass and other high yield sugar plants. Besides when corn was introduced and picked as a winner by the USG the price of corn went up 400% because of scarcity and price fixing. Time to get off the government money train and allow corn to feed us not drive us.
And end the EPA dictate that gasoline for vehicles contain 15% ethanol ?
Didn't see that, plus, what Ted endorses and what Ted will settle for are two entirely different things, just like his being against TPP but advocating TPA which makes it much, much, easier to pass TPP.
Ted's a lawyer, he'll behave and horse trade just like a lawyer if President. What he does for PR reasons in his first (still incomplete) term in the Senate as a springboard to the Whitehouse is no indication of what he'd do in office.
You want Ted, fine with me, but I've had enough of elite Eastern university trained attorneys who give good speech and don't deliver a damn thing. Congress is full of them.
People were head over heels in love with a lot of those Congress critters when it was speech making time, too. Now ? They behave just like the lawyers they are willing to go along to get along with whoever has the money to pay them.
bfl
Idiot! You can piss in my tank if it will work and I don't have to subsidize it. Were you born brain dead?
Ethanol ruins your engine if it is in too long. I just saw an engine that sat too long with four stuck intake valves.
I think the subsidy has long since expired.
I believe the subsidy has expired.
IMO, corn is for food, not energy.
I doubt you eat hybrid feed-corn. Now they feed the spent mash to livestock, and claim the processed meal is more nutritious than the cracked corn.
So now they get two products, alcohol and cattle feed.
So, why did beef triple while pork is still cheap? Cattle and hogs both consume corn.
The ethanol subsidy has expired.
But the EPA-enforced Replacement Mandate remains in place. And ethanol is presently more expensive than gasoline, plus requires more expensive handling -- shipment by truck or RR, rather than pipeline, for blending at distribution terminal (due to its hygroscopic nature).
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