SUPPORT FOR CONSUMER CHOICE AND ETHANOL

Lindsay Mitchell

Oct 11, 2013  |  Today's News

It’s nice to see some Midwestern governors standing up for agriculture and the businesses that support their local economies.

Yesterday, Iowa Governor Terry Branstad was published in the Wall Street Journal, explaining why he supports consumer choice and ethanol.

Read for yourself:

It is disappointing to read your editorial "The Ethanol Enforcers" (Oct. 8) attacking ethanol producers as well as Sens. Chuck Grassley and Amy Klobuchar. These champions aren't "bullying" oil refiners; they are standing up to the oil-refiner bullies.

I support consumer choice. If you want to pay higher prices for gasoline without ethanol, so be it. But the oil industry works overtime to prevent consumers from having access to inexpensive ethanol blends, limiting choice at the pump. The ethanol price discount hasn't been mentioned once in a Journal editorial or article. Nor has the Journal mentioned that the petroleum industry is the recipient of 100 years of industry-specific tax breaks.

In Iowa we are standing up for consumer choice and against the bullying of small retailers. Just this year I signed a law, despite oil-industry opposition, that prevents large refiners from mandating what fuels a local Iowa retailer can offer its consumers. Large refiners don't own a single retail station in Iowa, but they wanted to dictate fueling choices to Iowa retailers and their customers anyway.

The Renewable Fuel Standard, under regular attack by your editorial board, is the only piece of national energy legislation that is achieving the similar aim of providing choice and competition for the American people.

In fact, it is the ethanol industry, which makes a cheaper, cleaner and higher-octane product, that is ready, willing and able to face free-market competition. I invite the Journal's editorial board to come visit an Iowa gasoline station that offers a range of fuel choices; they'll find that ethanol competes just fine when consumers are given a true choice.

Gov. Terry E. Branstad

Des Moines, Iowa

The bad news always makes the media, and even our news is filled with negative things and risks to your industry that you need to take note of.  We hope that this Friday, we’ve ended your week on a good note.