Pawlenty comes out swinging on ethanol subsidies

June 6, 2011
Tim Pawlenty has committed the cardinal sin of politicians seeking their party’s nomination for the US presidency. Hooray for Tim Pawlenty.

by Bob Tippee, Editor

Tim Pawlenty has committed the cardinal sin of politicians seeking their party’s nomination for the US presidency. Hooray for Tim Pawlenty.

Less than 9 months before the crucial Iowa caucuses, the former Minnesota governor, while announcing his Republican candidacy, pointedly called for the end of subsidies for fuel ethanol. In Des Moines, no less.

Presidential hopefuls don’t do this. Throughout modern history, regardless of party, they have declared fealty to ethanol. Doing so is the price of entry into a campaign. Ethanol comes from corn, of which Iowa grows much, and the state’s day of precinct caucuses is the country’s first major intraparty contest. Fat ethanol subsidies exist because of the Iowa caucuses.

To disparage ethanol before the iconic event, scheduled this time for Feb. 12, is to risk losing the political support of powerful agricultural interests. So it’s just not done. Yet Pawlenty swashbuckled into the state capital promising straight talk and spending cuts.

“The truth about federal energy subsidies, including federal subsidies for ethanol, is that they have to be phased out,” he said. “We need to do it gradually. We need to do it fairly. But we need to do it.”

Wow.

So would Pawlenty mischaracterize the oil and gas industry’s standard business deductions as “subsidies,” lately a popular political deception?

Apparently, the former governor understands accounting. At a political gathering 3 weeks before his heroism in Iowa, Pawlenty called Obama administration proposals to end industry tax incentives “ludicrous,” saying, “What he’s proposing is a tax increase on energy at a time when gas is $4/gal. It’s preposterous.”

Wow again.

Inevitably, political sharks smelled blood. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who’s expected to announce his candidacy soon, made his first visit to Iowa on May 27 and declared, “I support the subsidy of ethanol.”

Earlier, Romney acted undecided about the issue. Now he’s on record steadfastly in support of political pandering and the economically unsustainable status quo. What a wimp.

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