The ethanol industry is putting a full-court press on the lame-duck Congress to renew the 45-cents-per-gallon ethanol tax credit that expires on Dec. 31. But Robert Bryce, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute writing for The Daily Beast, believes the ethanol industry remains a huge taxpayer boondoggle. He says even long-time proponent Al Gore no longer believes ethanol producers, who are now exporting record amounts, are achieving what the taxpayer support was intended.
Writes Bryce:
… taxpayers are giving fat subsidies (about $7 billion per year) to domestic corn ethanol producers who are then using some of that money to ship more and more of their product overseas. And in doing so, the U.S. ethanol sector is consuming nearly 40 percent of all the corn grown in the U.S. … Between 1999 and 2009, U.S. ethanol production increased sevenfold, to more than 700,000 barrels per day. And yet, over that same time span, U.S. oil imports increased by more than 800,000 barrels per day.
If ethanol isn’t ending the dependency on foreign oil, then the industry can only point to the number of jobs it creates as a reason to keep taxpayer help. But even that is misleading, Bryce believes.
According to an analysis done last year by the Environmental Working Group, each of those “green” jobs created by the ethanol scammers cost taxpayers between $195,000 and $446,000 per year. Earlier this month, Advanced Economic Solutions, an Omaha consultancy run by the former chief economist for ConAgra Foods, analyzed how many jobs would be added by extending the ethanol tax credit. Their conclusion: 353 additional ethanol manufacturing jobs would be created, at “an annual cost of $19.68 million per job.”
Dennis Byrne of the Chicago Tribune also wonders if Congress will stand up to the ethanol industry, which he calls the nation’s most gluttonous corporate freeloader.
