Families, businesses, and entire communities are beginning to feel the squeeze on their already tight budgets, and analysts are predicting that prices will stay high for the foreseeable future. When oil prices rise, it's especially hard on rural states like South Dakota because we drive longer average distances than people in other states, and fuel costs are a significant factor for our small businesses, our farmers and ranchers, and our critically important tourism industry. In short, we are vulnerable to the policies of other nations over which we have almost no control. America now imports 55 percent of its oil, and that figure is expected to rise to 64 percent in the next 20 years. Since 1978, when Congress first enacted ethanol tax incentives, ethanol production has grown slowly but steadily and now represents about 1.5 percent of the nation's gasoline supply.
Ethanol is vitally important to South Dakota.
I am currently writing legislation to establish a renewable fuel standard in our gasoline that would triple ethanol use over the next decade. This would add about a billion dollars per year to national farm income, cut into our dependence on foreign oil, and help clean the air. My proposal has wide support from a variety of groups, including the American Coalition for Ethanol, the 23-state Governor's Ethanol Coalition, the Nebraska Ethanol Board, the National Farmers Union, and the Clean Fuels Development Coalition. The Clinton Administration agreed with my approach when it recently announced that it will press Congress for authority to regulate the gasoline additive MTBE, which has been found to contaminate our water supplies. The nation's transition from using MTBE to using ethanol and other renewable fuels, will greatly expand the ethanol industry.