It doesn’t matter if anyone actually wants to create and/or use the stuff, Dorgan’s just going to make us do it.

Because he can, I guess.  Or, more accurately, because the alternative fuel industry folks have greased his palm just the way he likes.

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) --- The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee approved Wednesday a provision cosponsored by Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) that will continue to boost the production of biofuels in North Dakota and other states. The provision would increase the Renewable Fuels Standard to require refiners to produce and use 36 billion gallons of renewable fuel by 2022.

“North Dakota has vast corn and biomass resources to produce these renewable fuels, which will create more jobs and spur North Dakota’s economic growth,” said Dorgan. “This increase in the Renewable Fuels Standard will stimulate production and use of renewable fuels in North Dakota and across the country and will help decrease our dependence on foreign sources of oil.”

Well sure mandating ethanol will be good economically for some people (like corn growers and ethanol plant owners, a/k/a “Friends of Byron Dorgan"), but what about other people?  Like ranchers and hog farmers for instance.  All this corn being eaten up by an artificially-created demand for ethanol (remember that it’s Byron Dorgan creating this demand with a stroke of his pen, not actual fuel consumers) will make the cost of feed for livestock producers to skyrocket.  Which means, in turn, that our steaks and pork chops and hot dogs and hamburgers would get one heck of a lot more expensive as the ranchers pass on that expense to the end consumer.

Plus, we taxpayers not only have to pay more for our food but we have to continue to pay the subsidies for ethanol production which are the only thing keeping the fuel even remotely competitive with more traditional fuels.

If there were a real market demand out there for ethanol that was eating up the corn crop and driving up the price of food I’d be fine with it.  That’s how the market works, and it will adjust to meet that challenge.  But a demand created artificially because Byron Dorgan and the rest of his protectionist colleagues thinks there should be one?  C’mon.  That’s just dumb.

And if you don’t believe me that Dorgan is more committed to his political contributors than any real solution to energy issues involving ethanol, just ask him why he doesn’t favor dropping the $0.54/gallon tariff on imported ethanol from friendly trading partners like Brazil.

The quick answer to that is because Dorgan doesn’t really care about ethanol.  He cares about making the “Friends of Byron Dorgan” rich.  And the formula for that doesn’t include a free-market approach to alternative fuels.