The Renewable Fuels, Consumer Protection and Energy Act of 2007 -- Best Described As, The Big Lie!

Once again, the Senate has passed a Bill with a title intended to purchase your vote while in fact screwing the consumer. This Bill is both anti-energy and anti-consumer. The only people that will benefit from this Bill are corn growers and Ethanol producers. Of course, the Politicians hope to gain, if you are stupid enough to believe the title and ignore the results.

First, lets us discuss the good points of this Bill—It has a good sounding title. Good titles win elections!

Now that the good point has been addressed, lets get to the facts:

The United States is the only nation to place significant oil reserves off-limits. This includes onshore and offshore reserves. This Bill does nothing to change this. The Bill does nothing to alleviate the red tape that makes building new refineries nearly if not completely impossible. These steps were not taken because Congress is Spineless. They are afraid that the environmental extremist and their allies in the mainstream media will accuse them of destroying the habitat. God forbid that they might loose a wacko vote or two.

They mandated 36 billion gallons of Ethanol (E-85) per year by 2022. The ethanol is to be made mainly from corn. Corn has more than doubled in price in the past several months. This is because corn is being converted to ethanol. The use of corn for fuel has already driven up the price of nearly all foods. Milk is projected to reach $4.00 per gallon in the very near future. In addition to dairy products, live stock, poultry all feed on corn. Prices have to go up! Other crops are in short supply as farmers switch to high profit corn.

Furthermore, Ethanol is at best, only 80% as efficient as gasoline. That means that it takes 1-1/4 gallons of Ethanol to drive the same distance as with a gallon of gasoline.

Emissions are only a few percent lower with Ethanol. Essentially, this Bill pretends to cut the cost per gallon at the pump, while in reality, increasing the cost per mile by at least 25%.

The new CAFÉ standards will be addressed in another article.