Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain needs to get his facts straight…

Says McCain:

“This subsidized (ethanol) program - paid for by taxpayer dollars - has contributed to pain at the cash register, at the dining room table, and a devastating food crisis throughout the world,” McCain said in a statement.

Oh really? Unfortunately for the apparently confused Senator, reality is quite different than the cons’ spin. Also from that Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel article:

…not enough attention was being placed on the role that rising crude oil prices - which surged to $120 a barrel Monday - have played in driving up the cost of food.

“It’s the wrong medicine for the problem,” Wisconsin Agriculture Secretary Rod Nilsestuen said. “If we hadn’t had the significant increase in renewable fuels that we’ve seen in the last five years, we would have higher gas prices today, not lower ones.”

Moreover, an editorial in today’s Chicago Tribune from rocket engineer and mathematician Robert Zubrin and global security expert Gal Luft adds more facts to debunk the cons’ anti-ethanol spin:

Here are the facts. In the last five years, despite the nearly threefold growth of the corn ethanol industry (or actually because of it), the U.S. corn crop grew by 35 percent, the production of distillers grain (a high-value animal feed made from the protein saved from the corn used for ethanol) quadrupled and the net corn food and feed product of the U.S. increased 26 percent.

Contrary to claims that farmers have cut other crops to grow more corn, U.S. soybean plantings this year are expected to be up 18 percent and wheat plantings up 6 percent. U.S. farm exports are up 23 percent. [...]

The increased demand for food from the hundreds of millions of people in China and India rising out of poverty and moving to a more calorie-rich diet affects the price of food the most. Second is the price of [petroleum-based] fuel.

Higher fuel prices increase the cost of production, transport, wages and packaging, the main cost of retail food. For example, a $3 box of cornflakes contains 15 ounces of corn that cost 8 cents when bought from the farmer. So, farm commodity prices have almost no effect on retail prices. But the effect of oil price increases can be huge.

So, given those facts, what should Sen. McCain really be worried about? The current president’s Saudi “uncles”.

Zubrin and Luft again:

According to Merrill Lynch analysts, without biofuel programs, the price of oil would be about $13 a barrel higher than it now is. A $13 savings for each barrel could save the U.S. $65 billion in foreign oil payments.

So, rather than shut down biofuel programs, we need to radically augment them, to the point where we can take down the oil cartel. (emphasis added)

Should we be looking at other alternative fuels beside corn-based ethanol? Absolutely. The whole point to a “free” market is competition.

Give petroleum competition through ethanol, methanol, electric, “100mpg biodiesel“, etc.

Give corn-based ethanol competition through cellulosic-based ethanol, etc. (Shoot, Brazil uses sugar cane ethanol and even exports it to us!)

Much of that will require a reluctant Detroit (and Japan, Germany, Korea, etc.) to lay out an extra $100 or so to upgrade modern vehicle to meet Flexfuel standards. But $100 per vehicle in exchange for saving $65 billion-with-a-B in oil payments to foreign countries? That’s a bargain.

Open it up to actual competition.

Go read the whole Zubrin/Luft column. They raise several good points on how we can be spending our fuel dollars here at home, driving the US economy, rather than shipping that money off to OPEC and other foreign hands.

(h/t Illinois Review)