On the recordMay 4, 2010
The board president of Western Iowa Energy in Wall Lake, IA, recently stated: Due to the continued lapse of the biodiesel tax credit, Western Iowa Energy continues to suffer from significantly limited sales and reduced sales forecasts. Due to these market conditions, we have made the difficult decision to idle our facility. Today we are laying off 15 full-time employees. This represents more than 50 percent of our staff. On February 10, Senator Baucus, chairman of the Finance Committee, and I worked in a bipartisan fashion to develop an $84 billion jobs package that included a 1-year extension of several energy tax credits, including the biodiesel tax incentive. Before the ink was even dry on the paper, Majority Leader Reid scuttled our bipartisan package in favor of a partisan approach. That delayed passage of an extension in the Senate for well over a month, until the month of March. Now it has been languishing for 6 weeks. Where is the urgency? This Congress jammed through a stimulus bill that spent $800 billion to keep the unemployment rate below 8 percent, and of course it didn't stay below 8 percent. Yet we can't find the time to pass a simple tax extension that will likely reinstate 20,000 jobs overnight. We are 4 months delinquent in our obligation to these biofuel producers with no end game in sight. The lack of action on this issue defies logic or common sense. So while the Democratic leadership talks about creating green jobs, their action has led to job cuts.
