Floor Remarks by Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa
Senate President Pro Tempore
“E15 is Not a Mandate”
Monday, June 1, 2026
Iowa is the leading producer of ethanol. About 43,000 jobs are connected with that production.
Ethanol is produced from corn. Iowa is the number one producer of corn in the United States.
The House of Representatives has passed a bill for a 15% mixture of ethanol with petroleum gasoline; that’s E15.
Up until now, E10, the 10% mixture, has been considered a pretty good success story.
So, [by] expanding it, we’ll have more home-grown renewable energy, if we can get E15 nationwide, year-round.
And it takes legislation to make that happen.
In recent weeks, some of my colleagues have come to the floor to speak on this very same subject, some for E15 legislation and some against E15 legislation.
So, I think there [are] a lot of myths about ethanol and E15 that need to be cleared up.
One of those myths that continues to spread is that year-round, nationwide E15 is a mandate.
So, I want to be clear: E15 legislation is not a mandate. It’s a choice, and it’s this simple.
You’re driving into the filling station to fill up your car. Even today, with the high price that [gas] is, you will see that you have a choice of gasoline with no ethanol or with 10% ethanol or E15.
[The] trouble is not every retailer has [E15].
But it is a choice when you go to the pump to punch the button you want for the type of gasoline that you want to put in your car.
I support E15 legislation because it removes both outdated and unnecessary red tape from the Environmental Protection Agency.
Just as an example of what that red tape is: the law says that in some parts of our country, you can’t dispense ethanol in your gasoline [in] June, July, August and September. You can’t do it during those months. However, we’ve been successful under two years of Trump One four years of Biden and two years now of Trump, by presidential waiver, that we can have E15 nationwide.
But that’s red tape that we shouldn’t have to go through, and that’s the reason for the legislation.
It would allow consumers to have a choice to purchase E15 year-round in all 50 states, and it takes legislation to do that because you’ll never get the retailers of gasoline to spend the money to update their pumps for E15 without the legislation.
Some have done it now, trusting that there’ll be a presidential waiver year-after-year. But a lot of retailers won’t depend on that.
So, this legislation is not a mandate because it would not force gas stations to sell E15 if they don’t want to.
However, because E15 saves consumers [money], I suspect that many fuel retailers will choose to provide their customers with this high-quality, low-cost, home-grown fuel.
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