LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Ethanol cuts dependence, pollution

The Washington Times
Friday, October 21, 2011

As Secretary of Agriculture during the Reagan administration, I helped the American ethanol industry take off. Imagine my surprise to read an editorial in The Washington Times (“Corn-fueled politics,” Oct. 17) contending that American ethanol’s growth results from “allowing liberal zealots to set public policy” by “fulfilling their environmental fantasies.”

As President Reagan used to say, “Facts are stubborn things.” In fact, federal ethanol incentives were established to advance a goal that conservatives embrace: energy independence in a dangerous world. The program began after the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries‘ oil embargoes of the 1970s, which exposed our dangerous dependence on imported oil. It has been supported by Republican presidents from Ronald Reagan through George W. Bush - and they were right in their support. By 2010, the United States produced 13 billion gallons of ethanol, which displaced the need for 445 million barrels of oil imported largely from unstable or unfriendly regimes, from Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Iran.

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