Ethanol mandate should be repealed

IBD:

As drought destroys the U.S. corn crop and drives prices skyward, the U.S. now buys corn from Brazil and faces the end of its prized role as the world's top food supplier. It's time to scrap the ethanol mandate.

There's a whiff of foreboding about an already-economically enfeebled U.S. now losing its crown as the nation whose corn harvest could feed the world.

The worst drought since 1956 has hit 88% of the U.S. corn crop and is driving corn prices sharply higher.

For the first time, U.S. agricultural companies are importing corn from Brazil — the equivalent of Saudi Arabia importing oil, as the Financial Times noted.

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The same people who support the ethanol mandate passed a requirement that we could not import ethanol from Brazil.  Neither requirement makes any sense and they both make less sense because of the drought. With a growing supply of domestic oil and gas, the need for biofuels is certainly less urgent and would be even less important if Obama and Democrats were not strangling the domestic production of oil and gas on federal sites.