Bush - Cut Foreign Oil Dependence By . . . Importing More Ethanol!!

[hatrack]

WASHINGTON — House Majority Leader John Boehner said Tuesday that a temporary reduction in fuel ethanol import tariffs would help lower motor fuel pump prices. "We don't have enough ethanol in production today. It's coming on board, but if we were to temporarily reduce the tariff on ethanol coming into our country, I think that would ease the pressure that's out there, resulting in lower gasoline prices," the Ohio Republican told reporters.

President Bush last week also called on Congress to lift the tariffs now on fuel ethanol imports. Asked if there were enough votes in both the House and Senate to lift the ethanol tariffs, Boehner said: "I think it's possible."

But that could be a tall order based on the attitudes of key Midwestern senators, including Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, the panel which would likely review tariff changes. Iowa is the nation's largest producer of corn, the most often used feedstock for U.S. fuel ethanol. Speaking to reporters Tuesday evening in the Capitol, Grassley called lifting ethanol tariffs "a wild idea." "Why do you want to kill the goose that lays the golden egg?" Grassley said of the U.S. ethanol industry. "Why does this president want to be any more dependent on the importation of ethanol than on the importation of petroleum?"

Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson of South Dakota and other farm state senators sent a letter Tuesday to Bush, asking him to reconsider his call for dropping the foreign ethanol tariff.


EDIT

http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=10427

[Ian David]

1. Bush must have friends who went from heroin addicts to methadone addicts

Dumbass pRezadunce.

[Oerdin]

2. It's actually a good idea.

I'd rather import ethanol from Latin America instead of buying oil from people who want to kill us. That ethanol slows global warming is just icing.

[Dead_Parrot]

3. Icing?

If encouraging South America to trash the remaining rainforest in favour of cash crops for ethanol is icing, I'll be buggered if I want to eat the cake. :(

[rfkrfk]

4. Schumer supports the lifting of tarrifs

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2269924


so do I.

[Callalily]

5. I really have

to agree with Grassley;

<snip>Grassley said of the U.S. ethanol industry. "Why does this president want to be any more dependent on the importation of ethanol than on the importation of petroleum?" <snip>

All efforts should be geared toward making our energy needs less dependent on other countries. Here in Wisconsin we have several ethanol plants. If tax breaks are going to be handed out, why not to these companies and others like them?

http://www.doa.state.wi.us/pagesubtext_detail.asp?linksubcatid=1017&linkcatid=419&linkid

[rfkrfk]

6. transportation of crude is enviornmentaly unfriendly

what sounds safer,

import ethanol from South America,

or,

import more crude from the Middle East,
refine, keep the good stuff,
send the stuff you don't want, resid-other, somewhere else.

what happens if there is a wreck?

resid fuel oil is not nice, ask the Spanish

[GOPBasher]

7. It's better to use ethanol than oil.

I actually agree with this.

[Trillo]

8. Sounds like another corporate "rich buddy" tax cut.

Better get rid of all import taxes, so poor folks can pay for everything.

Long Live Cwhoporate Welfare!

(Back in the U.S.'s early days, all taxes were tariffs)

[hunter]

9. Importing ethanol: a bad idea made worse.

Here's the way I figure it:

My wife's grandfather was a service worker in an oil company town. He didn't work on the oil rigs, he worked in town. He was at the bottom levels of the company pay scales, and he made less than most people in the field. On his salary he could afford to buy a house, a car, decent food and clothing for his family, he had a health plan, his children went to school, he could afford to take his wife out to dinner in good restaurants a few times a year, he could take his family to the movies once a week, and he could take his family on week long vacations to big cities. His pension when he retired was comfortable.

Compare his standard of living to a cane field worker of the present day, in a country like Brazil. Brazil is actually one of the better places. They don't have so many slaves there as they do in some places.

This is where you live, your house has no running water:



http://www.everychild.org.uk/inaction.php?pageId=62

There are several reasons for this vast discrepancy in living standards. Some of them have to do with politics, the wealthy and powerful stealing from the poor, but to a much greater extent it is the difference between easy oil and ethanol from sugar cane. Sugar cane requires lots of labor for every gallon of ethanol made. The oil fields my wife's grandfather's company exploited were much richer. You drilled a hole a few hundred feet, and vast energy poured out of it.