While the federal government can’t magically get gas prices under $1 per gallon, a few policies other than the federal gas tax of 18.3 cents per gallon make our trips to the pump more expensive.
One of them is the ethanol mandate. It’s a corporate welfare handout to big agriculture that pierces American paychecks at the pump and the grocery store. Ethanol is a biofuel usually made of corn, but it’s also made of soybeans and other crops. When you fill up at a gas station in the United States, you’ll often notice that in addition to your gas being unleaded, it contains 10% ethanol.
The George W. Bush-era Renewable Fuel Standard is the reason for that ethanol in your gasoline. Every president since has supported it, but each has also been wrong to support it. Ethanol doesn’t belong in cars, boats, and lawnmowers.
For one, it damages engines that are ill-equipped to handle the biofuel. It also reduces fuel efficiency. A gallon of ethanol contains about 30% less energy than a gallon of gasoline, meaning that the fuel blend that cars use is about 3% less fuel-efficient than pure gasoline. The result? People have to buy more fuel to travel the same distance.
It’s not as if ethanol is good for the environment either. It’s not much better than gasoline, if not just as bad.
The other problem with the ethanol mandate is that it artificially increases demand for crops, including corn. Increased demand for corn raises the price. So while this makes corn on the cob and cans of corn more expensive, it also raises the price of corn feed used for livestock. Therefore, it makes meat and other products from livestock more expensive.
Support and opposition to the ethanol mandate create strange alliances. Sens. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, Pat Toomey, a Pennsylvania Republican, Bob Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, and Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, proposed a bill last year to repeal the mandate. Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden both support it, as do Sens. Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst, both Iowa Republicans.
The senators who support the repeal should keep pushing to make it happen. It would lower the cost of living and combat one special interest group that’s harming the people to make itself rich.
Tom Joyce (@TomJoyceSports) is a political reporter for the New Boston Post in Massachusetts.
