If one began enumerating present government boondoggles, there are so many and they are added so quickly I don’t think the list would ever be completed. And it is rare that one is ever eliminated. The National Helium Reserve was established in 1925 when dirigibles were operating in substantial numbers and it’s still going strong, having survived repeated attempts at putting it out of our misery. Of all of the government boondoggles, none is probably pragmatically worse or politically more expedient than the federal mandate for corn-based ethanol. Hank Campbell explains why at the American Council on Science and Health:
In the 1980s and ’90s, environmentalists touted ethanol as ideal renewable energy because it’s made from corn, which can obviously be regrown each year. They claimed it was equivalent in efficiency to gasoline and therefore superior to fossil fuels. The political and financial push for ethanol by greens was so strong that Vice President Al Gore broke a 1994 tie in the Senate to force an Environmental Protection Agency ethanol mandate as part of the Clinton administration’s Clean Air Act.
But there is nothing clean about it. It is energy and cost intensive to turn corn into fuel, which is why it cannot survive without government mandates and subsidies. Though 1994 made ethanol a reality for environmentalists, it was the Renewable Fuel Standard of 2005, by President George W. Bush and a Republican Congress, that really kicked the industry into high gear. The Renewable Fuel Standard gave EPA the authority to create quotas for ethanol. which forced its use even though it is less efficient than pure gasoline and results in lower miles per gallon. In 1993, before Vice President Gore allowed EPA to mandate ethanol, it account for less than one-tenth of 1 percent of fuel. It’s now 10 percent. President Barack Obama also did the environment no favors by turning over 5 million acres of land designated for conservation over to corn farmers to promote ethanol as “green” energy during his time in office, with another million acres of farmland that switched to corn because the profits were guaranteed by taxpayers.
Ethanol does not pass any standard for evidence-based policymaking and the Trump administration should end 24 years of government wishful thinking by his predecessors rather than increasing its use.
In all likelihood the Trump Administration will expand the ethanol subsidy rather than eliminating it. There are some subidies that are too big to be allowed to fail.
As long as Iowa keeps voting first we will retain this.
Steve
An argument for continuing to stockpile helium is that it is indispensable in scientific research and is the only element in the periodic table that “evaporates” from our atmosphere into space, where it’s usefulness will end.
Ethanol in gas also eats at rubber fittings and attracts water into the fuel, causing loads of lawnmowers and other small engines not to start in the spring. Ethanol in gasoline costs more, wastes food, raises the price of spirits, works less efficiently than gasoline, and ruins engines. What’s not to hate?
And now it’s been approved yearound at 15% content in regular unleaded gasoline over the previous 10% limit. I’d like to add though, that farmers around here say that after fermentation to create ethanol, the leftover corn, called “corn stover” is fed to cattle and has lost none of it’s nutritional benefits.
Hard to say “Boondoggle” in corn country.