SL Post-Dispatch: Taxpayers Wasting Billions on Ethanol Subsidies

St. Louis Post Dispatch, Bill Lambrecht
Published June 15, 2010

WASHINGTON — Some of the fiercest politics in Congress are waged around ethanol, with politicians outside the Midwest growing increasingly uneasy about spending billions to subsidize something that contributes to higher food prices. Those concerns could have added weight now that the budget deficit has become a voting issue and the ethanol industry is back seeking a five-year extension of expiring tax breaks. The industry also is pressing the government to increase the ethanol blend in gasoline from 10 percent to 15 percent. Today, a new report dumped fuel on the fire by concluding that taxpayers spent $17 billion from 2005 to 2009 to subsidize corn ethanol blends in gasoline but received little in return in so-called energy independence. The report by the Environmental Working Group tabulated that those billions bought a sum total of .6 miles-per-gallon savings of imported oil. Go here to read the rest: http://interact.stltoday.com/blogzone/political-fix/political-fix/2010/0...