Maybe, finally, this will be the year conservative standard-bearers grow a backbone and campaign for repeal of the renewable fuel standard -- that is, prefer their principles to corn-based votes.
It doesn't look likely, with Iowa so important and the GOP field still a train without a caboose. The problem is, the renewable fuel standard (RFS) is a measure beloved by Iowa corn growers and on which millions are spent for lobbyists every year to keep it in place. It isn't so much the subsidies -- they're due to sunset Dec. 31. It's the mandate. The mandate requires the gasoline supply in America to include an 8 percent blend of corn-based ethanol and other biofuels.
It would be one thing if ethanol were actually good for cars or the environment, but that's not the case. "[Ethanol is] an inferior fuel that damages automobile engines and fuel systems, it's bad for the environment, it has forced U.S. taxpayers to spend billions of dollars in ethanol subsidies, it requires more energy to produce than it generates, and it raises fuel and food prices for consumers," American Enterprise Institute scholar Mark Perry wrote in 2013. "On a purely economic and scientific basis, corn ethanol is an inferior, costly fuel that wouldn't even come close to being a viable energy product."
Even Al Gore has called it a "mistake."
So far, of the Republican presidential candidates -- apart from Ted Cruz who is co-sponsoring legislation to repeal the renewable fuel standard -- only Marco Rubio and Bobby Jindal have dared challenge the RFS mandate out loud. On occasion Jeb Bush and Carly Fiorina have appeared willing to oppose it. But all the others, including Donald Trump who has flip-flopped, are fully on board, pledged to support it.
In fact, Rubio made a point of expressing his opposition to the RFS during the first night of the Sunshine Summit, to the delight of the Smarter Fuel Future coalition in attendance, of which probably about a dozen Florida associations or groups are members.
The problem is, every election year the Iowa corn lobby is so powerful it forces Republicans who normally believe in the free market to check their principles at the Iowa state line and bend to its will. It punishes those who don’t pledge allegiance to ethanol by making them pay at the state caucuses.
The national conservative media are right: It's hypocritical for the Republican Party, which has spent the last several years pounding on the Obama administration for its "green corruption schemes" like Solyndra, to keep making an exception for Iowa. Government shouldn't be in the business of picking winners and losers, and that's exactly what the ethanol mandate does.
Hooray for groups like the Smarter Fuel Future coalition, who turned out strong to influence candidates at the Sunshine Summit.
Ethanol uses up 40 percent of America's corn crop, forces up the prices of corn products, is as harmful to the environment as it is helpful. The Iowa economy will be hurt during the inevitable adjustment, but even environmentalist Robert Means, Johns Hopkins University climate and policy professor, confirmed on C-Span that ethanol is not the best renewable fuel source.
This is the right time. We can get the subject out in the open for a candidates' thumbs up or down. It can be the beginning of a merciful end to another burdensome federal reulatory scheme. Candidates' presidential resolve can make the demise of the renewable fuel standard happen in 2016.
Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com or at 228-282-2423. Twitter: @NancyLBSmith
