The RFS Is Not Corporate Welfare: Response to WSJ Editorial

Source: By Isaac Randall, Wall Street Journal • Posted: Monday, March 23, 2015

The idea that the Renewable Fuel Standard is corporate welfare is simply wrong.

Your editorial “The GOP’s Renewable Evangelists” (March 10) says, “If they were thinking bigger, Republicans would understand that they’ll have more credibility to reform social welfare if they oppose corporate welfare.”

The idea that the Renewable Fuel Standard is corporate welfare is simply wrong. In South Dakota, the ethanol companies that were started in the past 15 years have prospered immensely, in no small part because of the RFS. These companies, like Poet LLC, Glacial Lakes Energy and Dakota Ethanol, were started locally by agricultural producers, engineers and local businessmen. The beneficiaries of the ethanol industry haven’t been large energy companies or national corporations. The ethanol companies in South Dakota where I grew up are almost exclusively member-owned by local farmers. Feel free to pick on the local communities of the Midwest which have vastly benefited from ethanol’s footprint in the past year. The winners and stakeholders have been the local communities and farmers who finally moved on to make a decent living.

Isaac Randall

Sioux Falls, S.D.

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