The Senate’s 73-27 vote against the blender’s credit for adding ethanol to motor gasoline was the first vote in Congress that the ethanol industry has ever lost, its chief lobbyist, Bob Dinneen of the Renewable Fuels Association (RFA), told an industry audience Wednesday.
In nearly three decades of lobbying in Washington, Dinneen said this was the first time he has lost a vote and further stated that the Senate’s decision did little more than to illustrate the anti-ethanol groups “poisoning of legislators” views on ethanol policy, Ethanol Producer Magazine wrote in reporting on remarks by Dinneen, president and CEO of RFA, to the International Fuel Ethanol Workshop & Expo in Indianapolis.
Dinneen said RFA and other ethanol groups were willing to accept a phase-out of the blender’s credit, which compensates the motor fuel industry for handling ethanol but expected to get new federal support for blender pumps and other equipment needed to expand the market for ethanol. He was apparently taken aback by the Senate vote in favor of simply abolishing the blender’s credit immediately.
“The RFA believes the Senate’s VEETC (Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit) vote does not indicate weakening support for ethanol, as other groups have suggested, but rather highlights the dysfunction of the current political workings of D.C.,” the magazine wrote.
He said the industry’s representatives in Washington needed more help to beat back what the magazine said he called “rampant misinformation campaigns being spread by anti-ethanol groups.”
“Dinneen suggested that ethanol industry employees should ramp up their individual efforts to correct erroneous information and educate the general public,” Ethanol Producer wrote.
