Iowa lawmakers sent a letter to President Joe Biden and Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack asking them to support the biofuels industry and seeking information on how proposed tax changes will affect farmers. The senators and representatives sent the letter to remind Biden that he promised to promote renewable fuels, including ethanol, to support rural America.
The letter points out that despite the promise, the administration’s proposed infrastructure bill would spend $174 billion to subsidize electric vehicles while hardly mentioning the biofuel industry. A Successful Farming article said when the plan was introduced in March, Ag Secretary Vilsack announced that the president’s proposed $2 trillion infrastructure plan, known as the American Jobs Plan, would include money toward increasing the production of biofuels.
The Iowa lawmakers say they want the president to recognize that biofuels can be used as a permanent energy solution to help decarbonize the transportation sector. “Biofuels should not be treated as a transition fuel but prioritized as a fuel of the future,” the letter says. The lawmakers also state in the letter that they want data from the USDA showing how a proposed change in the tax law affecting capital gains taxes would affect farm estates.
