Tom Daschle: Dedicated to wasting taxpayer money

Here's an article in the Washington Post about Tom Daschle campaigning to hold his Senate seat

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. -- Tom Daschle was pumping more than gasoline Wednesday morning at the Gas Stop convenience store.

The Senate's top Democrat was working the pumps and the crowd here to promote ethanol, the homegrown corn-based fuel additive and lifeblood of local farmers. Yet Daschle had a bigger, less obvious task on this day: convincing the locals that he's the irreplaceable protector of corn growers and other struggling South Dakotans -- not just Washington's chief antagonist of President Bush, who remains highly popular in these parts.

The minority leader, up for reelection next year, is embarking on the earliest and costliest campaign of his political career, trying to hold off a wave of attacks over his outspoken criticism of Bush. This week was "ethanol week," a Daschle staff member said, a time for the senator to break ground on a new ethanol plant and spend several days talking about how "two out of every three rows of corn" will be turned into Made in the USA corn fuel if he gets his way.

Now here's a Business Week article about a study from a Cornell scientist, proving that ethanol is a huge waste of energy and government subsidies:

"UNSUSTAINABLE." But to one agricultural scientist, the idea of distilling alcohol from corn for fuel just doesn't compute. David Pimentel of Cornell University has done the math. His bottom line: It takes more fossil-fuel energy to produce a gallon of fuel-grade ethanol than burning it will produce. Growing crops to produce fuel amounts to "unsustainable, subsidized food burning," charges Pimentel.

A professor at Cornell's College of Agriculture & Life Sciences, Pimentel conducted a detailed analysis of the corn-to-car-fuel process, which was published in the Encyclopedia of Physical Sciences and Technology in September.

According to Pimentel, the 7,000 pounds of corn produced on an average acre of land can yield about 325 gallons of ethanol. But planting, growing, and harvesting that much corn requires about 140 gallons of fossil fuels and costs $347 -- or about $1.05 per gallon of ethanol. And that's only to grow the grain. The corn must be crushed and fermented, then distilled and processed to extract the alcohol and produce 99.8% pure alcohol suitable for fuel.

ENERGY DEFICIT. At the end of it all, alcohol production is gushing red ink, says Pimentel. He calculates that it takes 131,000 BTUs to produce a gallon of ethanol. But a gallon of ethanol has an energy value of only 77,000 BTUs. "About 70% more energy is required to produce ethanol than the energy that actually is in ethanol," says Pimental. The deficit: "Every time you make 1 gallon of ethanol, there is a net energy loss of 54,000 BTU."

And the price at the pump? Ethanol from corn costs about $1.75 per gallon to produce, compared with about 95 cents to produce a gallon of gasoline. In addition, it takes 11 acres of land to produce the 850 gallons of alcohol needed to travel 10,000 miles -- the amount of cropland needed to feed seven people for a year, Pimentel says.

Even the approximately $1 billion a year now shelled out in the form of federal and state tax breaks doesn't balance the books, says Pimentel. Since about 70% of the corn grown in the U.S. becomes animal feed, the artificially high prices are reflected at the supermarket in the cost of meat, milk, and eggs.

Tom Daschle wants to promote ethanol so he can keep his job as South Dakota's Senator. In exchange, Americans get 1.) tax money spent on ethanol subsidies 2.) higher gas prices and 3.) higher food prices. What a deal! Thanks Tom!