The Senate is poised to take up an amendment to an energy bill that would pull the rug out from under ethanol, as presidential candidates in Iowa play up their support for the renewable fuel to gain votes in Monday night’s caucuses.
Corn ethanol, much of which is produced in the Hawkeye State, is a key piece of the Environmental Protection Agency’s flagship renewable fuel program called the Renewable Fuel Standard, or RFS. The program requires refiners to blend higher and higher amounts of ethanol into the nation’s fuel supply, along with biodiesel and other more advanced biofuels.
The program has come under fire by both Republicans and Democrats, who see the program as broken and incompatible with today’s public policy goals.
Nevertheless, ethanol and the RFS received support in the run-up to the Iowa presidential caucus, in the hope that voters will respond to candidates’ support for what has become a big economic engine in the state.
But even as both GOP and Democratic presidential candidates voice support for ethanol and the RFS in Iowa, Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., and a number of others lawmakers are sending the opposite message. They, and their supporters in conservative groups, are pushing to kill the EPA program with its ethanol mandate.
The conservative American Energy Alliance issued a key vote alert Monday evening, directing lawmakers to vote “Yes” on including the Cassidy amendment to the Energy Policy Modernization Act, which is pending on the Senate floor this week. The measure could come up for a vote as soon as Tuesday. It will be criticized by the head of the Iowa delegation, senior Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, who last month said he would be pressing to support the RFS in the energy bill debate.
“This costly mandate has hurt American families and businesses for over a decade by driving up fuel prices and requiring expensive, uneconomical and commercially unavailable ‘advanced’ biofuels to be blended into gasoline by refiners,” the key vote alert reads. “Sen. Cassidy’s amendment would fully repeal the RFS, thus ending the ethanol and advanced biofuels blending mandates.”
