Inactive Account Join Date: Sep 2009 Location: SoCal Original Poster | ""so trying something and admitting it may not work is WRONG when trying something, knowing it doesn't work and continually selling it (ie Bush tax cuts, war in Iraq, bank abuses) is the RIGHT way?......... how stupid have we really become???""
Lets see if the gov't continues the ethanol game. Agore no longer has a vote in the payouts. Hey it's only 9 billion or so. ADM thanks you.
ADM's Largess Preserved Ethanol Break, Study Says
By Ben White
Special to The Washington Post
Thursday, June 11, 1998; Page A21
Agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland Co. (ADM), the single largest beneficiary of a controversial federal ethanol tax subsidy, contributed more than $3 million in unregulated "soft money" to Republican and Democratic national party committees during the past 10 years, according to a study by Common Cause.
Congress recently extended the subsidy through 2007 as part of the new highway bill signed into law Tuesday, overriding efforts by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Archer (R-Tex.) and other critics of "corporate pork" to kill the tax break.
Champions of the subsidy say it is important for bolstering the farm economy and reducing the nation's dependence on foreign oil. Ethanol is a corn-based extract that is blended with gasoline to produce gasohol – a gasoline alternative. The tax break makes ethanol cheaper for gasohol producers to buy.
But the Common Cause report contended that the tax break – a perennial target of budget hawks and "pork busters" – escaped its latest brush with death largely on the bountiful political giving by ADM, the nation's largest ethanol producer.
Of the more than $3 million of soft money accounted for in the study, $2 million went to Republicans and $1.1 million to Democrats.
ADM also gave direct political action committee contributions to congressional candidates: $700,170 to Democrats and $529,276 to Republicans from Jan. 1, 1987, to Dec, 31, 1997, according to the report.
The top recipient in the Senate was Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), who got $34,500. The Senate Republican who received the most was Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), with $17,000. In the House, the top recipient was Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.), at $16,000, while the top Republican was Thomas W. Ewing (R-Ill.), $14,750.
The tax break costs the Treasury $600 million a year, according to the General Accounting Office.
"ADM has methodically, over the years, used big money to ingratiate themselves and protect the ethanol subsidy," said Common Cause president Ann McBride.
Dwayne O. Andreas, ADM's prominent former chairman, was known for currying favor with both political parties.
ADM declined to respond directly to the Common Cause study. Eric Vaughn, president of the Renewable Fuels Association, a Washington lobby representing ADM and 70 other ethanol producers, said the decision to renew the subsidy was less the product of ADM's political contributions than the result of grass-roots lobbying by corn-farming cooperatives that have an increasing stake in ethanol, as well as pressure from the governors of corn-producing states.
The tax subsidy was initiated in the 1970s oil crisis to help maintain a viable market for the alternative fuel.
Archer, armed with a 1997 GAO report describing the failure of ethanol to improve the environment or reduce U.S. reliance on foreign oil, successfully led an effort in the House to phase out the subsidy in the highway bill, only to be overruled in a House-Senate conference stacked by House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) with pro-ethanol members.
An angry Archer said Gingrich had given in to pressure from farm-state members worried about their reelection campaigns.
Midwestern defenders of the ethanol subsidy complained that Archer was trying to kill it as a favor to competing oil and gas industries in Texas.
"The oil industry has enjoyed subsidies for a hundred years," said John McClelland of the Corn Growers Association.
McClelland said that maintaining the subsidy would allow more time for research to make the production of ethanol less expensive, a point made in May by Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman.
One Decade, $4.5 Million
Archer Daniels Midland Co. is the largest beneficiary of a tax subsidy on ethanol, a corn-based extract. ADM entities contributed millions of dollars in PAC and "soft" money from 1987 to 1997:
Type To Democrats To Republicans Total
Soft money from company $617,000 $1,562,268 $2,179,268
Soft money, Dwayne and Inez Andreas 380,000 425,000 805,000
Soft money, ADM subsidiaries 190,000 100,000 290,000
PAC money 700,170 529,276 1,229,446
Total $1,887,170 $2,616,544 $4,503,714
Current members of Congress who received the most:
Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) $34,500
Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) 20,000
Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) 19,000
Sen. Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) 18,500
Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.) 17,000
Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) 17,000
Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) 16,000
Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun (D-Ill.) 15,000
Rep. Thomas W. Ewing (R-Ill.) 14,750
Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.) 13,500
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