Excerpts from a report by Bruce Watson
Another example of wasted tax dollars
Over the past 30 years, the federal government has given an estimated $45 billion to the corn industry to help support ethanol production. In 2011 alone, those subsidies totaled about $6 billion, or about 45 cents for every gallon of ethanol.
In 2007, Congress mandated that the U.S. must consume 15 billion gallons of alternative fuels a year — including ethanol — by 2015; by 2022, annual usage must increase to 36 billion gallons.
To make the U.S. corn ethanol industry profitable, lawmakers had to institute a tariff against Brazilian ethanol, which is made with sugar cane. The 54-cents-a-gallon tariff, coupled with the 45-cents-a-gallon corn subsidy, effectively cut 99 cents from the price of every gallon of ethanol produced, making American corn ethanol far more cost- effective than competitors from other countries — or other crops.
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Note: Tall grasses like switchgrass and miscanthus can yield more ethanol per pound while costing less to harvest than corn. Makes you wonder why we are still subsidizing corn.