Obama Administration Uses EPA to Buy Favor and Harm Cars

Red State ^ | Ben Howe

[IbJensen]

I’ve said before that when the Democrats propose a tax credit it’s called a “business incentive” and when a Republican proposes a tax credit it’s called a “loophole.” This game of semantics only works because of a complicit media which is more than willing to apply the Democrat designated classifications to ensure the correct narrative.

In reality, all sides are using fancy words to avoid the one word that best describes what is happening: subsidization.

Subsidies aren’t necessarily inherently bad. There can be subsidies that work in favor of economic growth or better opportunities for the disadvantaged. But more often than not, subsidies are used as a way to prop up industries that serve other agendas. Like elections for instance.

Such is the case with ethanol and specifically the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) plan to allow 15% ethanol blended with gasoline (E15) to enter the marketplace..

The ethanol industry, with the blessing of Congress and the Obama Administration, is lobbying the EPA to mandate increased ethanol usage. This would be accomplished by increasing the allowable proportion of ethanol in gasoline from 10% to 15% (E10 to E15). In addition, ethanol lobbyists are pushing the administration for fleet mandates on automakers, to require a higher percentage of flex fuel vehicles (FFVs) capable of running on ethanol blends of up to 85% (E85). (emphasis mine)

So, in an effort to win the support of “Big Corn” (which is actually pretty big), the U.S. government is going to force a product on the market that no one is asking for and actually drives up the cost of food making it even more difficult for poor people the world over to get access to the most basic of foods.

In an interview with the Financial Times, General Mills, which produces Cheerios cereal, Häagen-Dazs ice-cream and other major brands, also blamed ethanol subsidies for driving up food prices. Ken Powell the company’s chief executive said the price of corn and oats was up by 30 to 40% over last year.

“We’re driving up food prices unnecessarily,” Ken Powell, chief executive of General Mills, said in the interview. “If corn prices go up, wheat goes up. It’s all linked.”

But subsidies aren’t the only reason to reject the EPA’s plan to introduce E15. A “Dear Colleague” letter from Rep. John Sullivan (R) and Rep. Gary Peters (R) cites a new GAO report which reveals that this blend blend would actually be a danger to current cars on the road.

From the letter:

As you know, last year EPA made a premature decision to permit E15 to be used in model year (MY) 2001 and newer vehicles. This decision was made prior to the completion of critical vehicle testing. Vehicles on the road today are build and warranted to withstand only up to 10% of ethanol in gasoline. E15 not only threatens to harm vehicles but also boats, snowmobiles, and small engine equipment such as lawnmowers and snow blowers. E15 has also demonstrated harmful effects on the environment.

Read the whole letter here. Read the GAO report on biofuels here.

So where is the EPA getting the authorization to introduce a fuel standard which may very well be harmful to the car you’re going to be driving to work in tomorrow? From those pesky Clean Air and Clean Water Acts which seem to grant them unlimited authority to regulate whatever they want and ignore any concerns raised by independent studies.

Reps. Sullivan and Peters have introduced amendment to HR 2584 (Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2012) with the following important language:

No funds made available by this Act may be used to implement – (1) the decision of the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency entitled “Partial Grant and Partial Denial of Clean Air Act Waiver Application Submitted by Growth Energy To Increase the Allowable Ethanol Content of Gasoline to 15 Percent” published in the Federal Register on November 4, 2010 (75 Fed. Reg. 68093 et seq.); or (2) the decision of the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency entitled “Partial Grant of Clean Air Act Waiver Application Submitted by Growth Energy to Increase the Allowable Ethanol Content of Gasoline to 15 Percent” published in the Federal Register on January 26, 2011 (76 Fed. Reg. 4662 et seq.).

That’s legislative speak for “Mr. President, you can’t use any part of this to pay for your green dreams of screwing up our ‘gas guzzlers’ by recklessly introducing untested new standards just so you can send as much money as possible from the tax payer to voting blocks in corn states. Now stop screwing around in the market and figure out how to get your lame Democrat colleagues in the Congress to propose a budget for once in the 950+ since you took office you gigantic screw-up.”

Or something like that.

[IbJensen]

Toomey and his ilk do us a disservice by insisting that reductions of tax expenditures are “tax increases” and thus objectionable unless fully offset with lower tax rates.

Whether provided through the tax code or via explicit expenditures, they are subsidies and they increase deficits, distort markets, and cause suboptimal allocation of resources.

Another major problem is that ethanol has reduced energy content which results in reduced gas mileage. So, we get to pay multiple times. Once as taxpayers with the subsidies and then again at the pump as we have to fill up more often.

It is hard to think of a worse deal than ethanol, unless it is wind and solar.

[Charles Martel]

E15 not only threatens to harm vehicles but also boats, snowmobiles, and small engine equipment such as lawnmowers and snow blowers. E15 has also demonstrated harmful effects on the environment.

I guess if they can't get enough people to buy into the E85 stuff (not just consumers, but the entire fuel distribution and sales business), they'll try to increase the alcohol content in *all* gasoline, so the distributors can't avoid it.

Never mind that with each increase in the fuel''s ethanol content, those lofty CAFE goals slip further out of reach.

[farmguy]

I’ve said before that when the Democrats propose a tax credit it’s called a “business incentive” and when a Republican proposes a tax credit it’s called a “loophole.”

Actually Republican "loopholes" are generally tax credits that allow an industry (or company) to keep more of what they have earned by their own efforts. A dimocrat “business incentive” is generally money given directly out of the tax payer's vault that ends up in the pockets of dimocrat cronies with no strings attached.

[Cletus.D.Yokel]

:: A “Dear Colleague” letter from Rep. John Sullivan (R) and Rep. Gary Peters (R) ::

Ooooops! Gary Peters is D-MI(9).

[cripplecreek]

Purely an oversight I’m sure. /s

[Cletus.D.Yokel]

Did I ever tell you that he was a college fraternity brother of mine?

[cripplecreek]

Relatively conservative isn’t he?

I live in the 7th district so I don’t pay a lot of attention.

[Cletus.D.Yokel]

Fiscally conservative? No, he supported every budget of Granholm.

Socially conservative? No, he supports the liberal sacrament of abortion on demand.

Politically conservative? No, he’s a opportunistic politician that never had a real job.

Liberal feminism was the cause of the day when we were school. He didn’t take Dr. Smith’s Critical Thinking-101.

[4Speed]

“Complicit Media” needs to be “Fixed”, but alas, it’s a free country and the 1% can have TV shows....but we don’t have to watch, and “they” don’t have to have ratings that justify expensive advertising.

Click..........(change channels)

[Darren McCarty]

Peters has always been a dem. That's a bad typo.

[grellis]

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