Fox News Channel Your World - Transcript

Interview

Fox News Channel Your World

MR. CAVUTO: In a letter sent today to the Environmental Protection Agency, 22 Republican senators are urging the EPA to waive a mandate requiring the increase of ethanol production, a mandate many of them passed in the first place. Joining us now one of those senators, John Cornyn of Texas.

Senator, good to have you. What would this mean? What's your goal here?

SEN. CORNYN: Well, the goal is to hopefully help take some of the pressure off food prices and the unintended consequences of a federal government mandate when it comes to the production of corn- based ethanol. I think unfortunately we found out or have been reminded once again that mandates by Congress intervening in the marketplace can have some unintended consequences, and this is one of them.

MR. CAVUTO: All right. So because we channel so much energy into corn as a potential fuel, we lost sight of the fact that we were losing that much more for corn as a food product, right?

SEN. CORNYN: That's exactly right. And we've also neglected, I think, the biggest part of the picture, which is renewable energies can play certainly a part in our energy needs but not the majority. For better or for worse, we're going to be dependent on oil and gas for at least the near future, near to mid term. And the fact of the matter is Congress has basically shot itself in the foot by putting so much of America's natural resources out of bounds. That's probably the quickest thing we could do in order to relieve some of the price at the pump is tell Wall Street and the commodities traders in Chicago and elsewhere that we are going to increase supply by making America's natural resources available rather than just depending almost exclusively on imported oil and gas.

MR. CAVUTO: But do you think that there's a bigger lesson here, Senator, that using the tax code or the government, period, to incentivize any business for any meritorious purpose is a fool's game because you never know what will be, you know, deemed worthy one year is a mistake the next? I mean, so maybe it's not the government's role to incentivize anyone.

SEN. CORNYN: Well, that's certainly, I think -- the free market is certainly more efficient and more nimble than government. And certainly here, this is a good example of how, I think, good intentions can go awry. Fortunately, we did put in this legislation a waiver that the Environmental Protection Agency can invoke, which will hopefully save us from some of the pain associated with this ethanol standard which is, I think, unattainable without continuing to put upward pressure on food prices and with other unintended outcomes. So we tried to give ourselves an offramp here. Hopefully, the EPA will take advantage of it.

MR. CAVUTO: Real quickly, Senator, while I have you. Hillary Clinton and John McCain want to nix the federal gas tax this summer. Are you for that?

SEN. CORNYN: Well, I want to know where the money's going to come from because that's the money used to pay for expansion and repair of our infrastructure. So I'm worried about that. I'm not in favor of it unless we have someplace to pay for it.

MR. CAVUTO: Okay, Senator, always a pleasure. Thank you, sir.

SEN. CORNYN: Thanks, Neil.

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