HAPPY MONDAY READERS!

What a great win for the Saints on Sunday! QB Brees was "on the money" and the defense looked sooooo much better than the game against Green Bay.

If you were not aware that the US Senate voted overwhelmingly, but a vote of 73 - 27 to let the $0.45/gallon refinery tax credit and the $0.54/gallon tariff on imported ethanol expire on December 31st of this year. The House is set to vote on it soon also, and it believed that it will kill the subsidy also. If you had not seen the announcement on this, I thought you might be interested in reading the following article:

Senate votes overwhelmingly to end ethanol subsidies

BY BILL LAMBRECHT • blambrecht@post-dispatch.com > 202-298-6880 | Posted: Thursday, June 16, 2011 2:40 pm

WASHINGTON • In the end, the defeat of ethanol subsidies in place since the 1970s was swift, forceful and bipartisan.

The Senate voted 73-27 this afternoon to end tax credits for ethanol that amount to about $6 billion annually. The vote to kill featured 33 Republicans, 38 Democrats and the Senate's two independents. Saving the subsidies drew little support outside the Midwest. Missouri has 6 operating ethanol plants; Illinois has 13 with another in the planning stages.

"The best way for ethanol to survive is to stand on its own two feet," argued Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., who sponsored the Senate amendment along with Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.

The vote eliminates the 45-cent per gallon tax credit for ethanol refiners along with the 54-cent per gallon tariff on imported alcohol fuel that was designed to keep out Brazilian sugarcane ethanol.

But ethanol supporters beat back a separate effort that would have prohibited taxpayer financing of new blender pumps -- additional pumps at filling stations offering different blends of ethanol fuels. It fell 19 votes short.

The National Corn Growers Association, which is based in Chesterfield, fought along with other farm groups and the ethanol industry to preserve the tax credit, which was due to expire at year's end.

"The oil companies have never given up their assault on ethanol and biofuels," asserted Sen. Tom Harkin, a Democrat from Iowa -- the nation's leading producer of corn and ethanol.

Senators from Missouri and Illinois voted along with their Midwestern colleagues against canceling the tax credit. They are promoting legislation aimed at shifting to a different tax incentive for ethanol that would be tied to the price of oil.

The subsidy has been around since the Energy Tax Act of 1978 gave ethanol a 40-cents per gallon tax exemption, increased to a high of 54-cents per gallon over the years.

The Renewable Fuels Association, which represents ethanol producers, said afterward that they were "disappointed in the shortsightedness of this vote, particularly as this same body voted less than one month ago to preserve billions of dollars in taxpayer handouts to the oil industry."

The Corn Growers put out a statement saying that the organization was severely disappointed that "politics trumped policy." But the St. Louis group's president Bart Schott, said he was pleased at defeat of the amendment that would have prevented the Agriculture Department from handing out grants for blender pumps.

Schott said that "blender pumps provide options for those with flex-fuel vehicles and can help the ethanol industry grow in the years to come."

Read more: http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/political-fix/article_120513fe-984d-11e0-8022-001a4bcf6878.html#ixzz1YMvh4qyg