On the recordMarch 30, 2011
The argument is they do not agree with the blenders' credit, but if in fact you take it away you need to give somebody else a tax break. I think the American people know, for us to get out of the problems we are in we are going to have to do a lot on both sides of the balance sheet. One of the ways--we have $1.3 trillion worth of tax expenditures in this country. A large portion of them--not a large portion, a significant amount of money is in programs such as this that are directing people to do things that they are going to be doing anyway and we are paying them to do it. So it is a tax expenditure. It is cutting spending is what it is. It is a true credit, so they get it. The more they blend, the more money we pay. So if they blend beyond what the mandate is, they cannot sell it. Then we ship it to Europe or wherever else will consume it, but yet we are subsidizing. First of all, it hurts our own energy usage because we are taking a lot of oil and a lot of water to do it. But we are helping the Europeans with our own subsidy in terms of shipping this over. So I do not care about the debate outside of the Senate. What I care about is that the American people ought to have a shot at saving $4.9 billion through the rest of this year. Mr. McCAIN. And it seems to me that this issue has some complexities to it----
