Dems Adding Billions of Dollars Of Pork To Tax Bill

Robert Bryce
December 13, 2010 4:00 A.M.

Lame-Duck Bailouts for Ethanol and Wind?
Congress, please, just say no.
National Review Online

Ethanol is the Frankenfuel of the energy business, a subsidy-devouring monster that cannot be killed, no matter how great the political opposition. Farm-state senators have apparently succeeded in adding an extension of the ethanol tax credit, which is scheduled to expire at the end of the year, to the tax bill now working its way through Congress.

While that news is disheartening enough, the wind-energy business — the electricity sector’s equivalent of the ethanol scam — may also be winning in its effort to garner more federal subsidies. It is pushing lame-duck legislators to extend a part of the stimulus package known as the Section 1603 tax credit, which gives cash directly to wind-project developers. But what the wind boosters really need to keep their struggling business afloat is a mandate requiring the production of renewable electricity — at least 15 percent by 2020. And some Democratic senators are pushing a bill that would do just that.
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• Renewable Energy and Ethanol Added to Break Impasse on Tax Compromise (ecopolitology.org)
• Let Ethanol Subsidies Expire For Good (forbes.com)
• The Hawkeye Handouts (online.wsj.com)