Grassley Sets the Record Straight on E15, Presses for Senate Passage of Permanent Legislation

VIDEO

The month of May is a very busy time of year. It’s graduation season, recital season and, of course, planting season for American farmers.

Here in the Senate, lawmakers will burn the midnight oil this week to pass a reconciliation bill that delivers essential funding for national security and public safety.

Well, I want to assure my colleagues that this senator is never too busy to set the record straight.

And today, I come to the floor to set the record straight on E15.

E15 is a higher blend, higher octane fuel that’s 85% gasoline and 15% of homegrown American ethanol.

Last week, the House approved landmark legislation to make year-round E15 the law of the land and lower gas prices for Americans from coast-to-coast.

The driving force [behind] the House victory was Iowa’s House delegation. That shouldn’t surprise you, because Iowa is the leading producer of ethanol.

That victory was led by Congressman Randy Feenstra, Congressman Zach Nunn, Congresswoman Ashley Hinson and Congresswoman Mariannette Miller-Meeks.

I applaud all four of these House members for their effort, and for supporting a major industry in Iowa, and probably about 40,000 jobs in Iowa. And I’m glad to take up the baton with a bipartisan coalition here in the United States Senate.

With those generalizations, I would like to shed some light on what year-round E15 would do.

E15 would offer Americans a lower priced fuel option when they fill up at the pump, giving families somewhere between ten and 30 cents per gallon. And that’s big savings.

Making E15 permanent delivers more choices for the consumer and year-round savings for families who are facing these higher gas prices that we’ve seen since the war in Iran started.

So, it’s very simple: a vote for E15 is a vote for lower gas prices.

Year-round, nationwide E15 would bring certainty to fuel refineries, to the marketers, to the retailers and the renewable fuel producers. No more costly switchovers in the summer, when under law, ethanol cannot be sold in certain parts of the country.

It would end a patchwork of regulations from one year to the next, boost the domestic gas supply chain, and it would surely unleash America’s domestic energy dominance.

Unleashing E15 stops Americans from being held hostage to foreign crude oil.

It reduces carbon emissions and tailpipe pollutants and would pump $14 billion into the U.S. farm economy. On top of all those advantages, E15 is pro-environment.

And, at a time when farmers are looking for expanded markets, E15 would deliver for corn farmers and create more jobs in Rural America.

E15 puts Americans’ families, our farmers and biofuel producers in the driver’s seat to power forward clean, affordable homegrown fuels.

Now, here’s what year-round E15 does not do.

And I emphasize this part of my remarks because there’s a lot of lack of knowledge about E15, and maybe a lack of knowledge about ethanol, generally. And this is from what I’ve been hearing from my colleagues.

It would not force Americans to fill up their gas tank with E15.

It would not force fuel retailers to even sell E15.

In short, it would not create a mandate. And how many times have I heard from my colleagues that it would be a mandate?

In fact, EPA Administrator Zeldin confirmed this very fact to my colleague from Nebraska just last week. E15 is not a mandate, and that’s from the EPA Administrator Zeldin.

President Trump delivered his seal of approval for year-round E15 during a visit to my home state in January. He called on Congress to pass E15 without delay and said he would sign it as soon as it reached his desk.

Vice President Vance and Secretary Rollins have also traveled to Iowa to endorse E15, because they know what I know. Ethanol is good for national security, good for the farm economy, and good for U.S. energy independence.

My efforts to help get homegrown fuels from the field to the pump started five decades ago during the energy crisis of the 1970s.

And that energy crisis was called that because it was referred to as an “oil embargo,” and it was something that [the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)] forced upon the entire world.

Two decades ago, I worked with President George W. Bush to create and expand the Renewable Fuel Standard, known here in Washington among energy people as “RFS.”

Last year, the RFS celebrated 20 years of success, paving a cleaner, more energy-independent future for Americans. And within those 20 years, I’ve worked with the Obama, the Trump and the Biden administrations to expand E15 into our domestic fuel supply.

Now, having said all that, guess what happened? The sky didn’t fall. No refineries shut down.

So, that brings me to the “Chicken Littles” inserting themselves in today’s debate, and I’m talking about the so-called “mid-sized” refiners.

They’re running around this town trying to gut the hard-fought, year-round E15 victory that passed with bipartisan support in the House of Representatives.

It’s interesting this coop of little Chicken Littles is now crowing.

After eight years of presidential waivers that allowed for E15 summertime sales, the refineries are now trying to convince people in Washington, including some of my colleagues here in the United States Senate, that the sky will fall if we pass permanent, year-round, nationwide E15.

So, let’s go back to the facts. We’ve had E15 by presidential waiver since 2019. [Administrator] Zeldin has confirmed that, in these eight years, not one refinery closed because consumers had the choice to purchase E15.

For those saying that refineries have been ignored in the E15 debate: that is surely not the case. And, after 16 years of working on this issue, I would know.

Refineries have been deeply involved in negotiations for years. There have been very high-level talks on the topic of E15, and the Rural Domestic Energy Council in the House was specifically created to hear from people with these refineries.

In her remarks here on the Senate floor last week, my colleague from Iowa mentioned that the annual earnings of the nation’s six mid-sized refiners are more than all of America’s family [farms] combined.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with making money. That’s the beauty of the free economic system that we have in America. It’s powered our economy and fueled innovations for the last 250 years.

However, we shouldn’t let this bill’s opponents talk out of both sides of their mouth. You can’t take in record profits on the one hand and claim you’re a step away from bankruptcy because of E15 on the other hand.

Homegrown E15 is an example of the entrepreneurial spirit and discovery that makes America great.

E15 powers up American domestic energy, lowers prices at the pump and boosts the farm economy. You add all that up, and E15 is a win for America and for Americans.

America’s farmers and families are counting on this.

The commonsense choice is very clear. America needs permanent, year-round E15 from sea to shining sea.

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