Ethanol for Newt

According to the staff of Congressman Paul Ryan, the budget deficit is poised to increase to $1.48 trillion from $1.416 trillion even when a projected $66 billion more will be raised in tax revenues from 2010 to 2011. In other words, the president’s budget is getting more money, and spending it faster than it did last year, and then borrowing even more to boot.

In this perilous situation every American should be asking for less spending. Special interests are gobbling up taxpayer dollars, and so-called “conservatives” like Newt Gingrich are not helping. Mr. Gingrich has given an absolute stinker of a speech in Des Moines to the Renewable Fuels Summit. According to Monte Shaw, the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association executive director, “Speaker Gingrich has been a champion for renewable fuels since at least 1995 – first in the legislative arena and, more recently, in the arena of ideas.” According to Mr. Gingrich’s speech, he’s been in the tank for ethanol a lot longer than that.

Apparently the “ideas” Mr. Shaw writes about are the plans Mr. Gingrich has to push for a government mandate to automakers that all vehicles be made to “flex-fuel” standards, so they may run on a fuel mix of up to 85% ethanol. In his speech Gingrich says, “there is zero reason to tolerate their resistance,” referring to the automakers’ concerns about building flex fuel cars. No reason to “tolerate” resistance? This statement is coming from a man that has (rightly) hammered the Obamacare plan on its individual mandate. The hypocrisy is rife.

Mr. Gingrich argues that more ethanol must be blended with all gasoline because Americans would be “confused” by more than one pump. This, even though there are already many gas stations with diesel pumps, and Americans haven’t had a problem yet. In Europe multi-fuel stations are common, if not the norm and the Europeans don’t seem to be having a problem of putting CNG in gasoline tanks.

But according to Mr. Gingrich the Europeans are not to be trusted. Using his logic, turning 40% of America’s corn crop into fuel is not the reason there are food shortages. The reason, according to Mr. Gingrich, is that Europeans will not grow genetically modified crops. Now it appears Mr. Gingrich would like to extend his mandating to Europe. Perhaps he’ll run for president of the world.

Listen to his speech here and judge for yourself if you think Americans ought to be forced to buy anything, even flex fuel cars. Right now, due to a government mandate Americans are forced to buy a tenth of a gallon of ethanol every time they want nine tenths of a gallon of gasoline.