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D.C. Dispatch: Iowa lawmakers push for year-round E15, ag trading and Social Security solvency • Iowa Capital Dispatch [1]
['Jay Waagmeester', 'More From Author', '- March']
Date: 2024-03-01
Lawmakers came back from recess this week to pass a continuing resolution until March 8 for six of the spending bills yet to be passed, and March 22 for the six other bills to be passed.
Iowa delegates returned and rejoiced the passage of year-round E15, yet asked for the measure to take effect sooner than the enaction date.
Check out what Iowa’s lawmakers were up to this week:
Year-round E15
E15, gasoline blended with between 10.5% and 15% ethanol, was approved for year-round sale, effective in April 2025. However, Iowa lawmakers are asking for the year-round ruling to go into effect immediately.
The rule change will take effect in Iowa, as well as Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, South Dakota and Wisconsin.
The Iowa delegation wrote a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) asking for the year-round sale of E15 fuel blends to begin now, not in 2025 like the EPA recently approved.
“This delay in permanent, year-round E15 sales punishes American families and farmers who have already faced record inflation, skyrocketing fuel prices and uncertainty in the market as a result of this Administration’s economic policies,” the members wrote.
In a Senate Agriculture Committee meeting this week, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack indicated he was confident there will be a waiver permitting the sale of E15 during the summer 2024.
“I applaud Governor Reynolds’ persistent advocacy for ethanol producers across the heartland. Those efforts paid off today,” Sen. Chuck Grassley said in a news release. “I’ll be glad to see expanded market opportunities for Iowa farmers, but as of now, that won’t be soon enough. While the EPA was correct to unleash year-round E-15, in typical bureaucratic fashion, it couldn’t help but attach a few strings. Delaying the effective date until 2025 is an unnecessary setback for producers and drivers.”
The EPA stated the 2025 start date is to avoid an insufficient fuel supply if enacted sooner.
Feenstra said the Biden administration “needlessly delayed the approval” in a news release, and also took to social media.
Today, I helped send a letter to the EPA with @ZachNunn urging the Biden administration to make #E15 available year-round NATIONWIDE. While inflation drains wallets and savings, #E15 can lower gas prices for our families. There’s no reason to delay national year-round access. — Rep. Randy Feenstra (@RepFeenstra) February 27, 2024
Sen. Joni Ernst weighed in on the rule and also called for earlier implementation.
“Finally, after years of advocacy, the EPA’s final rule will allow for eventual E15 sales year-round to give consumers a cleaner, cheaper choice at the pump,” Ernst said in a news release. “While I welcome this long overdue decision and applaud the work of Governor Kim Reynolds and Attorney General Brenna Bird, pushing off implementation until 2025 fails to provide our Iowa farmers, consumers and retailers with certainty as we approach the 2024 summer driving season.”
Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks also released a statement on the change.
While the EPA was correct in granting this waiver, I am disappointed that we must wait another year for implementation. Read my full statement below: pic.twitter.com/ICgcUp3GLf — Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, M.D. (@RepMMM) February 22, 2024
Securing Social Security solvency
Feenstra is calling for an “honest projection” of the financial health of Social Security in an effort to protect the long-term solvency of the program.
Feenstra introduced a bill that would require the Congressional Budget Office to include the projection of the program in its 10-year economic outlook.
“Our seniors deserve to receive the Social Security benefits that they have earned after a lifetime of hard work and sacrifice,” Feenstra said in a news release. “However, thanks to reckless government spending and elevated interest rates, recent reports project that the Social Security trust fund could run out of money in less than a decade. This is not only alarming for folks who rely on their Social Security check, but also absolutely unacceptable for lawmakers who choose to ignore this looming crisis.”
The change would make the outlook for Social Security more widely accessible with inclusion in the economic outlook report, a document used by economists and lawmakers, according to Feenstra’s office.
Farm Bill update
Grassley said the future of the Farm Bill remains uncertain, though he is feeling pessimistic.
“Now we’re into almost March and I want to be very pessimistic about getting a new five-year Farm Bill because I don’t see any movement at this point and if we don’t get some movement in committee during the month of March I don’t see how it is going to get out,” Grassley said during his weekly Capitol Hill Report, also criticizing Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer for not scheduling enough days in session.
“If we don’t get a new five-year farm program, we’ll get another one-year extension,” Grassley said, meaning the 2018 Farm Bill would be in effect for seven years.
Iowa farmers take the long view & Congress should too I stressed the importance of passing a 5yr Farm Bill to my colleagues in Senate Ag hrg yesterday w USDA Scty Vilsack — Chuck Grassley (@ChuckGrassley) February 29, 2024
Grassley urges colleagues to beef up meatpacking industry competition
Grassley penned a letter to his colleagues, asking them to encourage competition in the meatpacking industry.
Grassley and Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat from Montana, encouraged voting against changes to the Packers and Stockyards Act in the Agriculture Appropriations bill.
“Improving competition is critically important to ensuring consumers have safe and affordable protein options at the meat counter, and family farmers and ranchers get a fair deal for their products,” the senators wrote. “That’s why we write today to ask for your help opposing any policy rider in the FY 2024 Agriculture Appropriations bill that would prevent the United States Department of Agriculture from enforcing the Packers and Stockyards Act to hold multi-national food manufacturers accountable.”
Grassley argues that having four dominant meatpacking companies – Tyson, Cargill, JBS and National Beef Packing – is great for the companies, but creates a struggle for profit for ranchers and farmers. The senators say having a market concentration of four meatpackers “makes it way too easy for these companies to engage in price fixing tactics.”
The senators called on their colleagues to push back against lobbying efforts by the meatpacking industry to lower consumer prices and strengthen farmers.
Trade deficit discussion
Rep. Zach Nunn, Feenstra, and a bipartisan group of 20 other representatives sent a letter to Vilsack and Katherine Tai, U.S. trade representative, asking for a more robust agricultural trade agenda.
The representatives wrote after the release of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Outlook for U.S. Agricultural Trade report, which projects $169.5 billion in exports and more than $200 billion in imports in 2024.
“As a global leader in innovative practices that enable us to feed a growing world population, America has traditionally sold more food and agricultural products to other countries than it imported,” the representatives wrote. “Just a decade ago, our nation posted an ag trade surplus of over $30 billion – now we are facing the inverse, an agricultural trade deficit of $30 billion.”
The representatives raised concern the numbers are a result of proactive trade policies of other countries and emphasized the need for the pursuit of more market access and more exports.
The lawmakers called for the elimination of tariff and non-tariff barriers, expansion of domestic trade promotion programs, enforcement of free trade agreements and taking steps to reform the World Trade Organization dispute resolution process.
“Our agricultural trade deficit has significantly worsened partly due to the Biden administration’s failure to negotiate new trade agreements that benefit American agriculture,” Feenstra said in a news release. “As the breadbasket to the world, we must work to ensure that our farmers and producers have access to new markets so that they can sell their goods and make a profit.”
Delegation drives against EV expectations
Feenstra led another call to President Joe Biden to withdraw an EPA rule that would require 67% of new light-duty vehicles and 46% of new medium-duty vehicles to be electric by 2032.
More than 130 members of Congress signed the letter, including Ernst, Grassley, Nunn, Miller-Meeks and Rep. Ashley Hinson.
The lawmakers said the rule “amounts to a de facto mandate for EVs and phase out of the internal combustion engine vehicle.”
The members criticized the reliability of electric vehicles and said the Biden administration “continues to degrade liquid fuels and combustion engines in order to implement its costly Green New Deal agenda that harms our families and businesses, increases our gas prices, and makes us more dependent on foreign supply chains — particularly China.”
Grassley said the initiative is premature and unrealistic.
Thx Rep Feenstra for leading latest pushback on EPA’s truck emissions rule Biden bureaucrats r ahead of their skis trying to accelerate an EV transition w/o the infrastructure 2 do so Premature& esp unrealistic for rural states Even govt says 4/5 cars will b gas-powered in 2050 — Chuck Grassley (@ChuckGrassley) February 23, 2024
Ernst asks for more tolerance from ATF
Ernst introduced a bill that would allow federal firearm license holders to self-report violations and would enable district judicial review of license revocations, instead of the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).
“Biden’s ATF has had it out for gun owners since day one,” Ernst said in a news release. “For years, the Biden administration has cracked down on law-abiding gun dealers to advance its gun-grabbing agenda, even preventing small businesses from making a living.”
In June 2021, the White House announced a “zero tolerance” policy that would result in the ATF seeking to revoke the licenses of dealers upon their first willful violation of the law, including falsifying records, failing to conduct a background check, transferring firearms to a prohibited person and more.
Ernst’s bill would require the ATF to work with federal firearms license holders to assist in avoiding future violations and correcting an already committed violation.
Ernst opposes UN Palestine funding
Ernst introduced a bill that would redirect funds allocated for, but not spent, from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees in the near East to instead pay for the construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Ernst accused the UN of facilitating the crisis at the border.
“Funding the UN is like paying for a security system that enables, rather than deters, intruders,” Ernst said in a news release. “U.S. taxpayers shouldn’t be giving billions of dollars to an international organization facilitating the crisis at our southern border and whose own staff helped harm and take hostage American citizens.”
Grassley seeks inspector general investigations of DOJ lawyers
Grassley reintroduced a bill that would allow the Inspector General of the Department of Justice to investigate professional misconduct by Department of Justice lawyers.
Grassley says the bipartisan bill would make practices at the Department of Justice more consistent with other federal agencies.
“Federal prosecutors have significant authority to enforce our laws,” Grassley said in a news release. “In cases where they abuse that authority, independent watchdogs should be the ones to investigate – not fellow Justice Department attorneys. This is a cut-and-dry matter of accountability and public trust.”
Grassley’s Inspector General Access Act would increase accountability and close a giant loophole, according to the bill’s cosponsors.
Grassley investigates EPA program
A Grassley report found a portion of $4.3 million of American Rescue Plan Act funds allocated to an EPA program were spent on employee salaries, benefits and vacation expenses.
According to Grassley’s report, about 90% of documented spending in 2021 by the Environment Justice Collaborative Problem-Solving Cooperative Agreement Program (EJCPS), an EPA program, was used for overhead expenses, and the EPA lacks proper oversight mechanisms.
Grassley accused the EPA of obstruction of congressional oversight, saying the organizations cwere evasive or nonresponsive when contacted.
The EJCPS supported 34 community-based organizations in 2021, with each organization eligible for up to $200,000. The program is targeted to “develop and implement solutions that address environmental and/or public health issues for underserved communities.”
None of the 34 community-based organizations were based in Iowa.
“Americans deserve properly managed grant programs that measurably benefit their local communities and our nation,” Grassley said in a news release. “Having seen this grant program laid bare, it’s difficult for me to imagine how any American taxpayer would rather have their hard-earned money invested in this program, rather than back in their own pocket.”
Dairy Margin Coverage program opens enrollment
The Dairy Margin Coverage program opened enrollment for the 2024 period, a measure delegates asked for in a Jan. 16 letter to Vilsack.
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