Jon Kyl: “I wish to address the same subject and begin where the distinguished Senator from Illinois left off when he talked about…”

“I wish to address the same subject and begin where the distinguished Senator from Illinois left off when he talked about new leadership. I wonder if he would join Republicans to see if we can eliminate the tariff on Brazilian ethanol, something which the Senator from Illinois suggests we need more of, one of the three solutions he says we need-- more leadership, more ethanol and fuel economy standards. I think we are going to provide some leadership and we are going to provide some more ethanol. One way to do that is to reduce the extraordinary expense of bringing it in from Brazil. We haven't gotten a lot of cooperation from the other side on that. That will be my first question to him: Will he step up and exercise leadership with us to eliminate that tariff on ethanol? There is a 10-percent mandate in the Energy bill on ethanol. The Senator suggested we should have a higher mandate on ethanol, or a higher subsidy for that. The reality is one of the reasons gas prices have been where they are is we haven't been able to meet that 10- percent mandate. There isn't enough ethanol being produced and, therefore, because there is a lack of supply in comparison to the demand, the price has gone up, obviously. What we need to do here, instead of pointing fingers and demagoguing the issue, is to understand economics and appreciate where the real problem is. Then we can begin to solve it.…”