Hallelujah! The Senate has done something I never in a million years expected them to do. They voted overwhelmingly to eliminate several billion in tax breaks for ethanol! (story here). This is a great development! Most of the punditry are looking at this as a symbolic blow to energy subsidies. But this is just as much a subsidy to entrenched agricultural interests. If this leads to further decreases in corporate welfare for either Big Energy or Big Ag, I would be thrilled!
The reason I never expected this is because Republicans are so committed to rural voters and big business that the combination had me thinking they would never touch ethanol or ag subsidies. I'm thrilled to be wrong about that. Well done to the 73 Senators who voted to end this waste of money!
3 comments:
I will believe that it not "faux" reform when the Congressmen get through with it.
Until it passes both houses and is signed by the President, it is just "showboating."
This has had substantial bipartisan support since it was first passed, I doubt if it is going to go away with the current Congress.
Sorry. Laws are not passed because they make sense. They are passed because that is what the politicians' owners tell them to do.
Big Ag owns more congress critters than Big Oil. This is simply not that important to Big Oil or the subsidies would never have been enacted.
Will die in house. Sorry.
LTG, you are probably right that the House Republicans will kill it but it has always been the Senate with its dramatic over representation of agricultural interests that I figured on being the most serious long term impediment. Even if the House kills it this time, the House majority can shift more dramatically and quickly than can the Senate's and that 73 Senators voted to cut these tax breaks gives me hope that something can be done about this stuff someday.
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