Scott Walker went to Iowa over the weekend and embraced the ethanol mandate — a corporate welfare program that subsidizes corn farmers and ethanol producers at the expense of drivers, eaters, restaurants, and the environment.
As my colleague Phil Klein aptly put it, “if Scott Walker can’t stand up to Iowans, how will he stand up to the Islamic State?”
Why do I assume this position was tailored to Iowa’s caucus goers? Because Walker vehemently opposed the ethanol mandate back in 2006, actually standing out from the rest of Wisconsin’s gubernatorial field in that regard.
From Milwaukee’s Daily Reporter at the time:
“It is clearto me that a big government mandate is not the way to support the farmers of thisstate,” he continued. “Central planning will not help our family farmers,protect our environment or provide jobs. The free-enterprise system must driveinnovation to relieve our dependence on foreign oil, not mandates from the stateor federal government.”
The folks at Walker’s proto-campaign sent along the full transcript, and they emphasize that he’s calling for an eventual phase-out. I’ve bolded the parts that apply directly to the ethanol mandate.
WALKER: “Well we’ve talked about this before. In general, on any issue, I’m someone who believes in a free and open market. I don’t like a whole lot of government interference. That applies to a whole lot of areas, not the least of which is the EPA with things like navigable waters and other issues out there. I’ve fought those challenges at the state and local level as well.
“Now, long-term—we’ve talked about this before as well—my goal would be to get to a point where we directly address those market access issues and I think that’s a part of the challenge. So that eventually you didn’t need to have a standard just like you no longer need in the industry to have the subsidies that were there before to help insure we had a strong system. I think eventually you can get to that. But you can’t get to that unless you deal with market access.
I read this as Walker saying that he wants to keep the ethanol mandate at current levels until ethanol blends are more widely available. Given ethanol’s inherent problems as a fuel, that may not be for a very long time.
