This is a good news/bad news story.

The good news was found in an unexpected place. We at Taxpayers for Common Sense did not have a lot of good things to say about the recently enacted 2014 Farm Bill, but there were a few glimmers of hope hidden among the billions of dollars of wasteful subsidies. For one, taxpayers would no longer be forced to subsidize ethanol blender pumps through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Energy for America Program. Corn ethanol, a fuel that is blended with most gasoline at a level of 10 percent (known as E10), was the main beneficiary of these subsidies since it is the most widely produced biofuel in this country.

The corn ethanol industry has a long history of receiving federal taxpayer subsidies.  One of the biggest subsidies – the $6 billion-per-year Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit – was finally allowed to expire in 2011 after a Senate amendment to eliminate it offered by Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Tom Coburn, R-Okla., passed by a 73-27 margin. (The underlying bill ultimately failed to pass, but the amendment signaled that the days of the ethanol industry’s rule on Capitol Hill were over). So, the corn ethanol lobby pivoted to maximize taxpayer subsidies and turned to USDA to secure ethanol blender pump subsidies through the rural energy program which was originally designed to promote rural solar, wind, hydropower and geothermal projects. Congress even specifically barred corn ethanol from receiving taxpayer subsidies through it and other energy title programs in the 2008 Farm Bill. But in 2011 USDA began to allow blender pump subsidies to qualify for these payments since efforts to secure more subsidies through Congress were unsuccessful.

So it was great news that the (otherwise terrible) 2014 farm bill (officially the Agricultural Act of 2014) prevents the mature corn ethanol industry from receiving subsidies to purchase pumps dispensing higher blends of corn ethanol.

Now for the bad news. Less than a month after signing the farm bill into law, the president proposed new subsidies for ethanol blender pumps in his FY 2015 budget proposal. The overall budget was released last Tuesday, with detailed back up documents following in the last few days. Buried on page 158 of the “Analytical Perspectives” document, released Monday, is up to $200 million in new advanced energy manufacturing tax credits for the “construction of infrastructure that contributes to networks of refueling stations that serve alternative fuels,” or in other words, more subsidies for corn ethanol blender pumps and other alternative fuel infrastructure projects. Such is the power of the corn ethanol lobby.

The corn ethanol industry has received more than its fair share of subsidies over the past 30 years. Through federal tax credits, loan guarantees, grants and other subsidies, billions of taxpayer dollars have been squandered on an industry that relentlessly seeks additional special interest carve-outs. A nearly identical tax credit to the one proposed by the president – the “Alternative Fuel Vehicle Refueling Property Credit” – has been available to gasoline stations dispensing 85 percent ethanol. It expired last year but has a history of being renewed in “tax extenders” packages. A federal Renewable Fuel Standard also mandates the use of 15 billion gallons of corn ethanol by 2015. While the biofuels industry as a whole was intended to help achieve American energy independence, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and spur rural economic development, the corn ethanol industry has fallen short of achieving these goals while spurring numerous unintended consequences and long-term liabilities that have resulted in more harm than good.

All told, more than $3.3 million has been spent on corn ethanol blender pumps, in addition to numerous other federal subsidies. Instead of using the budget to reinforce one of the very few good policies in the farm bill, the administration is proposing to undo it and increase this amount by up to 66 times. Unfortunately, this time the bad news wins the day.