Ethanol

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Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I am pleased to join with Senators Coburn and Feinstein in offering an amendment to repeal the ethanol excise tax credit and the ethanol import tariff. These policies are fiscally irresponsible, environmentally unwise, and economically indefensible.

Historically, our government has helped a product compete in one of three ways: either we subsidize it, we protect it from competition, or we require its use. Right now, ethanol may be the only product receiving all three forms of support.

The ethanol tax break is extraordinarily expensive. The Government Accountability Office has found that the tax credit costs American taxpayers a staggering $6 billion annually. This is quite a sum to prop up a fuel that is causing land conversion for corn production, commodity and food prices to rise, and is barely putting a dent in our Nation's dependence on foreign oil.

With our amendment, which has an effective date of July 1, we have the opportunity to immediately save American taxpayers nearly $3 billion in just the 6 months remaining in this year.

The 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act requires the production of at least 36 billion gallons of biofuels in 2022, up from the original 2005 Energy Policy Act, which required 7.5 billion gallons by 2012. Collectively, the first generation biofuels industry will receive tens of billions in unnecessary subsidies through the year 2022.

If the current subsidy were allowed to continue for 5 years, the Federal Treasury would pay oil companies at least $31 billion to use 69 billion gallons of corn-based ethanol that the Federal Renewable Fuels Standard already requires them to use. We simply cannot afford to pay the oil industry for following the law.

The data overwhelmingly demonstrates that the costs of the current ethanol subsidies and tariffs far outweigh their benefits. The Center for Agricultural and Rural Development at Iowa State University estimated that a 1-year extension of the ethanol subsidy and tariff would lead to only 427 additional direct domestic jobs at a cost of almost $6 billion. That is roughly $14 million of taxpayer money per job.

While expanding our capacity to generate alternative domestic fuel sources is an important step toward becoming less dependent on foreign oil, I have serious concerns about the effects of increased ethanol use. There are other alternative sources of energy that make far more sense.

The energy, agricultural, and automotive sectors are already struggling to adapt to the existing ethanol mandates. I am disappointed the Environmental Protection Agency has issued a partial waiver for the use of E-15, a blend of gasoline containing 15 percent ethanol. Many residents in my State have already experienced difficulties using gasoline blended with 10 percent ethanol, finding that it causes problems in older cars, snowmobiles, boats, lawn mowers, and off-the-road vehicles. The EPA's E-15 waiver fails to adequately protect against misfueling and will add unnecessary confusion at the gas pump for consumers. We simply cannot place so many engines in jeopardy.

These first-generation biofuel mandates also present environmental concerns, as they could result in energy efficiency losses and increased emissions of air pollutants because the mechanical failures can jeopardize the effectiveness of mission control devices and systems installed on engines.

In addition, over recent years, we have seen food and feed prices increase as crops have been diverted to first-generation biofuel production. I think of it this way: We should be raising crops for food, not for fuel.

Senate Homeland Security Committee chairman Joe Lieberman and I held a series of hearings in 2008 that examined the impact of corn-based ethanol on food prices, and we found that it certainly had a negative impact. For one thing, crops that had been grown to support other grains were being converted to produce corn. The land was being switched to corn production, and the corn was no longer available for the products that used corn for food, but instead was being diverted to the production of ethanol.

The bottom line is that we can no longer ignore the cost of this policy to our Nation and its taxpayers, particularly given our current fiscal crisis. At a time when we are projecting a deficit, this year alone, of $1.5 trillion, why in the world are we spending $6 billion subsidizing ethanol? Subsidizing the blending of corn-based ethanol into gasoline is simply fiscally indefensible.

I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting the Coburn-Feinstein amendment to repeal the ethanol excise tax credit and to eliminate the ethanol import tariff.

I yield the floor.

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