Congress urged to end ethanol tax credit

Friends of the Earth launched an online ad campaign today to mobilize Americans to contact their members of Congress and demand that they end a tax credit that funnels billions of taxpayer dollars to corporate corn ethanol interests. The campaign, titled “Yellow Is Not Green,” encourages the public to help “save tax dollars-and the planet” by pushing Congress to let the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit (VEETC) expire at the end of this year’s lame duck legislative session. “This is a wasteful subsidy that benefits Big Oil at the expense of taxpayers and the environment. Congress must end it this year,” said Kate McMahon, biofuels campaign coordinator for Friends of the Earth. “There’s nothing ‘green’ about corn ethanol beyond the color of the tax dollars Congress hands out to corporations producing and blending it. This lame duck should not lay the rotten egg of another big, wasteful handout to industry by extending the corn ethanol subsidy.” The VEETC has long been opposed by Friends of the Earth and a diverse coalition of groups. It gives billions of tax dollars each year to gasoline companies like BP, ExxonMobil, and Shell for blending ethanol into consumer-level fuel-despite a federal mandate that already requires them to do so. This year alone, the subsidy cost taxpayers $5.4 billion dollars, and the amount is set to increase if the credit does not expire on December 31

Congress urged to end ethanol tax credit | Tomorrow is greener