Meaning that they’ll allow off-shore drilling, but only if we spend tens of billions of tax dollars on renewable energy (read: more subsidies and mandates for ethanol).

The latest half-baked idea comes from a “gang of ten” senators — five Republicans, five Democrats — who have offered a compromise that would lift the ban on offshore drilling in exchange for $20 billion in new federal spending on alternative sources of energy. The list — ag-friendly guys like Saxby Chambliss and Kent Conrad, corn-staters like Ben Nelson and John Thune — smells of ethanol. The compromise bill includes $2.5 billion for biofuel research and billions more in incentives for automakers to make cars with ethanol-burning engines. There might be a smart way for Washington to subsidize research into alternative energy, but this isn’t it.

Am I the only one who is weary to death of seeing the ethanol industry constantly showered with gifts such as those proposed above all at the expense of the taxpayers?  And what good does lower gas prices do if taxpayers are burdened once again with additional government spending aimed at propping up the biofuel industry?

Put simply: In the decades biofuels like ethanol have been available on our markets not once have they ever been a cheaper alternative to gasoline without subsidy.  Even now with E85 ethanol selling for dozens of cents less per gallon than traditional gasoline it’s still not a viable alternative because people who use it lose fuel efficiency, anywhere from 5 - 15 miles per gallon.

Republicans need to stand firm on the drilling question.  They need to tell America, and the Democrats, that we are going drill for more oil in America because that’s the right thing to do and that such a decision doesn’t need to be tied to any more corporate welfare for “big biofuel.”