Will Obama suspend the ethanol mandate? Will Congress?

President Obama is trying to use farm policy to win over the Heartland: he knocked Paul Ryan for voting against the pork-laden farm bill, and now he’s planning to have the government buy meat — call it the Troubled Livestock Relief Program — in order to alleviate the huge run-up in feed prices caused by the drought. Our editorial page explained the folly of this meat-buying pan yesterday.

There’s a simpler solution at Obama’s finger-tips: suspend the corporate-welfare federal ethanol mandate. Livestock producers are pushing for this, and Marketplace correspondent Chris Farrell thinks it will happen.