Word: congression
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...reaction of Congress and the public to this deteriorating outlook described by the authors of the budget document is muted. There was a hint of foreboding in the statement made by the Administration's budget director in the remark, "The change in the deficit estimates reflects upward technical revisions in light of new information regarding the collection of receipts, financial stabilization efforts, and other federal programs." The part about "new" information implies that current estimates may be superseded by future updates...
...corn ethanol as a carbon catastrophe; the EPA had to use extremely generous assumptions to produce scenarios in which it's even remotely attractive as a fuel alternative. In any case, the heavily subsidized corn-ethanol industries won't really be penalized for promoting deforestation and accelerating global warming; Congress exempted its existing plants from any consequences in the 2007 law requiring the stress tests. At her May 5 news conference with Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, Jackson suggested this was a good thing, because corn ethanol is an "important bridge" to better biofuels. The Administration...
...fairness, corn ethanol was already pretty much a done deal; Congress demanded 15 billion gallons in annual production by 2022, and the industry is already almost there. That is why the real stress tests that mattered were the ones concerning biofuels of the future like cellulosic ethanol grown from switchgrass - which has not been proven commercially viable but has been hailed as a kind of magic weed. Once again, the EPA used rosy life-cycle assumptions to conclude that next-generation biofuels will reduce billions of tons of emissions over the next century, ultimately reducing our oil consumption...
...This is why Congress included the stress tests along with a huge biofuels mandate in its 2007 energy bill, throwing a bone to environmentalists who were freaking out that the alternative fuels they had championed for years were in fact ecological calamities. The law - supported by then-Senator Barack Obama - required life-cycle analyses that would calculate direct and indirect emissions...
...true that Congress forced the Administration into this weird situation, in which it has to conduct pro-forma analyses of a policy that's essentially a done deal. Even if the EPA does rule that some biofuels flunk the life-cycle test, the industry can still apply for waivers...