Senator Chuck Grassley held his weekly press call with farm reporters. This week he touched a little bit on the situation with the Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS). President Trump has been promising a ?deal? to help the hurting biofuels industry. A hurt that has come from the wholesale granting of Small Refinery Exemptions (SRE) by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Senator Grassley talked about Monday?s meeting with the President and others involved in the biofuels discussion.
Grassley says there is a need to make sure only those refineries facing hardships get waivers, and we must make certain the lost gallons are reallocated, just as the RFS spells out.
Rural America was the base upon which the President won his campaign. Many of those same farmer supporters are now wavering in future support, between trade deals and the RFS situation. Senator Grassley had a message to those people. He stated the President was getting many conflicting messages from different areas of biofuels. Grassley claims the President had a better understanding of what the biofuels industry needed, once they sat down and proposed a united plan.
It?s been well over a year since the then Scott Pruitt led EPA granted the first wave of SRE waivers. Since then the New EPA administrator, Andrew Wheeler had been canvassing the country saying things would change, and they didn?t. For months, Senators Grassley and Ernst, as well as other lawmakers have been talking to the administration about the need to get waivers under control. It seems rather confusing that the message wasn?t fully comprehended in the White House until a few days and weeks ago. The response to the granting of SRE waivers seemed pretty straight forward.
