Walker said that he favored drawing down federal tax credits for wind power over time and opposed mandatory labeling of foods made from genetically modified crops. This is one of those where I believe it's served its purpose," Walker said of the credits. "I would support phasing that out over a period of time." Source
America needs a strong conservative who has the strategic “vision thing” - seeing what is wrong and a plan to correct it to get America back to a Constitutional republic.
That “vision thing” supersedes a Governor (Walker, Bush) who has been an administrator but lacks the commitment & courage to stop ALL forms of amnesty including its various brand names.
Cruz is that visionary much in the same vein as Reagan and not afraid to speak the truth. Walker & Bush, not so much...
A big part of the rationale for mandating ethanol use in our gasoline blends was that it was a suitable replacement for the chemical additive MTBE. Just how harmful MTBE may or may not have been is subject for an entirely different debate, but it is nevertheless all water under the bridge. Ethanol was chosen as the replacement for MTBE, and it would not make much sense to eliminate it completely from our gasoline.
The real debate should be over how much ethanol is needed in gasoline to serve as a suitable replacement for MTBE. The original E10 formulation (or gasohol, as it used to be known) contained much more ethanol that was needed to prevent knocking in engines. Even a 5% blend (E5) is overkill. E5 was never a popular blend in the U.S., but in Europe it is the blend which is found in premium grades of gasoline (which contains other additives to give it octane numbers of 93 and higher).
Instead, in the U.S. we went the other way. If E10 was okay, then E15 must be better, right? Instead of answering that question, Congress rushed to try to standardize E15 as the the blend of record for the nation.
That caused all sorts of problems for small engine makers such as Briggs & Stratton. They invested heavily in the 1970s to make their engines safe for use with E10, and Congress comes along and pushes the standard up to E15. That was too much for most of these small engines and the companies which made them. Brands such as Clinton and Tecumseh either disappeared completely or were bought out by the Chinese. The only silver lining of the EPA’s assault on small engine makers is that the survivors have maned to make the small four-stroke engine incredibly light for the amount of power that it produces.
Reports of problems caused by E15 in lawn care equipment, outboard motors and small industrial engines by owners were overwhelming, and as a result of E85 and other factors, the small engine industry changed almost overnight. Now only Kohler and Briggs remain from the old days, and newer players such as Honda, Kawasaki and Ryobi are now on the list. The two-stroke small engine has virtually disappeared, with Lawn Boy switching to four strokes across its product line. A few two-stoke makers, such as Göbler-Hirth are still around, but their products are highly specialized (like Italy’s Vortex engines, which as used in go-karts).
Abolishing the ethanol mandate overnight, while an appealing idea for champions of limited government, would send shock waves throughout the system. Phasing it out, or at least down, appears to be the compromise which would cause the fewest problems for consumers and manufacturers. For the latter, the damage has already been done.
High blends of ethanol, such as E85 are ridiculous and wasteful. Proposed escalation of the mandate to blends of E30 or E35 has thankfully been met with significant resistance. Sorry, Al Franken. Now the idea of keeping it at E15 for the time being and scaling it back to E10 is gaining in popularity.
Again, E5 is a blend which would contain more than enough ethanol to do the job for which it was originally justified. Actually, E1 or E2 would be more than sufficient, but good luck getting it down that low. E5 would be a significant victory.
So any candidate who supports phasing out the mandate is doing more than just pandering, whether they realize it it or not. An incremental approach to lowering the mandate, as distasteful as it is to absolutists, would cause fewer problems for farmers, consumers, refiners and manufacturers in both the long and short runs.
- JP