Ethanol important tool in struggle against oil imports

It's frustrating when there's a plan in place to deal with an issue and we encounter those who aren't willing to make the sacrifices to see it through.

Imagine if Winston Churchill had said "we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; ... oh, never mind."

A bit dramatic, perhaps, but that's what Texas Gov. Rick Perry wanted the Environmental Protection Agency to do, in effect, by asking it to cut the amount of ethanol that is required to be blended with gasoline.

The Renewable Fuels Standard, passed in December, requires that 9 billion gallons of ethanol be blended into gasoline from Sept. 1 to Aug. 31, 2009. Perry, saying ethanol is raising corn prices for livestock producers and driving up food prices, asked the EPA to cut that in half.

EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson announced Thursday that the agency was denying the request.

"I am greatly disappointed with the EPA's inability to look past the good intentions of this policy to see the significant harm it is doing to farmers, ranchers and American households," Perry said. "For the EPA to assert that this federal mandate is not affecting food prices not only goes against common sense, but every American's grocery bill."

What Perry didn't mention was that shortly after he met with poultry-producing giant Bo Pilgrim early this year, the company donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to him and the Republican Governors Association which he chairs.

Neither did he mention that ethanol has kept U.S. fuel prices at least 20 to 40 cents lower than they would have been without blended ethanol, according to the National Sorghum Producers.

Nothing was said about the oil industry's influence, but we find it hard to imagine a Texas governor who didn't have it in the back of his mind when dealing with a competitor to fossil fuels.

Ethanol has its drawbacks, for sure, including cost of production and lower energy content, and not everyone favors ethanol subsidies, Sen. John McCain among the opponents.

But ethanol is an important tool in our struggle to reduce foreign oil imports, and it's competitive with gasoline. Even if it wasn't, ethanol is worth the sacrifice.