Ethanol industry pressures Cruz to back federal mandate

The ethanol industry is pressuring presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) to support the federal ethanol blending mandate.

America’s Renewable Future, an Iowa-based ad-hoc group formed to push ethanol in the 2016 election, wrote a letter to Cruz Wednesday saying that he has his facts wrong on federal subsidies for oil, which hurt ethanol.

{mosads}“We’re writing to let you in on the truth about oil that Iowans have known for a long time: thanks to their lobbyists, oil companies are longstanding beneficiaries and supporters of numerous government subsidies that amount to nearly half a trillion dollars over the last century,” the group wrote. “Those same oil companies stand to make another $165 billion over the next ten years.”

Cruz was the only candidate at March’s Iowa Agriculture Summit to declare that he does not support the renewable fuel standard, which mandates that fuel refiners blend a certain volume of ethanol and biodiesel into traditional gasoline and diesel.

The standard is extremely popular in Iowa and benefits its corn industry.

At a recent Iowa event, Cruz told a biodiesel executive that he does not support the blending mandate and that oil does not get subsidies.

America’s Renewable Future, which was formed in part to  said Cruz was wrong.

“While the ethanol tax credit expired years ago, tax breaks for fossil fuel production — even one signed by President Wilson in 1913 — continue in perpetuity,” it wrote.