It is encouraging that Americans are recognizing that billions of dollars in federal subsidies for ethanol are a vast giveaway to buy farm-state votes at taxpayer expense.
It would be more encouraging if lawmakers showed some common sense and ended unconstitutional subsidies for the corn-based fuel.
Uncle Sam props up ethanol by paying producers 45 cents for every gallon manufactured and by mandating that ethanol make up a growing percentage of our nation’s fuel.
But the subsidy is a grab bag of unintended consequences, some of which were highlighted in a recent article in the Times Free Press.
The story noted that some local gas stations are keeping their gasoline free of ethanol because of the harm it can do. Among other things, it reduces gas mileage, gas station owners noted. Science backs up that claim.
It also does damage.
“It has too much trouble tearing up the parts in the automobiles,” one local mechanic told the newspaper. “Just the other day, we had a customer with an import car where (ethanol) burnt up the catalytic converters in it.” Local small-engine mechanics have also reported ethanol’s harm to lawnmowers and similar equipment.
And although ethanol is supposed to help clean the environment, it may do just the opposite.
Producing large amounts of corn requires the use of plenty of diesel fuel to run farm equipment, plus the spreading of fertilizer and herbicides, said Dr. Hill Craddock, a University of Tennessee at Chattanooga biology professor.
“The environmental consequences of growing corn are a disaster,” he said. “There’s no debate about that. Corn is not ecological.” He added, “(I)t takes more energy to make the corn than the fuel value of ethanol.”
Another major drawback of ethanol is how it takes so much corn out of food production. That has driven up costs for corn-based foods as well as for the meat from corn-fed livestock.
The American people are paying a high price for ethanol, both financially and environmentally.
Congress is overdue to end this subsidy provided at taxpayers’ expense.