An outspoken advocate for ethanol, Grassley serves as a senior member of the Senate Finance Committee. Ethanol is good for farmers and jobs in rural America. It's good for the environment. And, in terms of our fight against dependence on foreign energy, the ethanol tax incentive is a bargain. Today I co-hosted with Senator Wellstone of Minnesota and America's largest consumer group Citizen Action, a symposium on America's growing and dangerous dependence on foreign oil.
Foreign oil carries a heavy cost.
In 1987, a former Secretary of the Navy estimated that the total cost of protecting our Persian Gulf oil supply line to be about 20 percent of our total military budget. On top of the military costs for foreign oil, taxpayers continue to support big oil with subsidies that total many billions more. So today, domestic energy producers should consider that we have a lot in common and a lot at stake in our fight to reduce our dependence upon foreign oil. If we're going to work together we can't be shooting at each other. But that's exactly what's happening.