USDA Secretary Vilsack Supports Scaling Back Ethanol Subsidies
NACS Online
Posted: Apr 22, 2011
MINNEAPOLIS – U.S. Department of Agriculture Tom Vilsack backs reducing the federal ethanol subsidy but does not support eliminating it entirely, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports. Vilsack would like to use some of those funds to assist gasoline stations in offering more ethanol blend options at the pump. He also wants to send part of those funds to research renewable energy.
During an interview with the newspaper’s staff, Vilsack said that Congress should not just take away the 45-cent-per-gallon federal ethanol credit. “When the biodiesel tax credit was allowed to expire, we lost 50 percent of production capacity immediately — 12,000 jobs were lost,” said Vilsack.
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