McCain says no to Energy Subsidies
On Saturday, I wrote about some of the reasons corn-based ethanol is wrong for the country in both the economic and environmental sense. In this article, I talked about how the ethanol sector gets outrageously large subsidies and that I believe that we shouldn’t be giving them these. Well, it seems that McCain agrees with me on this. (my emphasis)
Sen. McCain argues that many of the steps are little more than subsidies that enrich special interests. He has long called for scrapping the federal ethanol tax credit, saying America’s corn-ethanol industry can and should stand on its own. He has also voted against requiring electric utilities to boost their use of renewable energy sources, preferring to let cities and states set their own targets for renewable energy.
At a roundtable with business leaders in Washington state last month, Sen. McCain expressed reluctance to support government incentives such as tax credits for wind and solar energy. He compared his stance on the matter to his position on corn ethanol. “I’m a little wary — I have to give you straight talk — about government subsidies,” he said. “When government jumps in and distorts the market, then there’s unintended consequences as well as intended.”
Those are pretty much my feelings about the whole giving subsidies in general. In the corn-ethanol case, it is arguable that the government subsidies has contributed to the rising price of corn.
