Before Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds traveled to Texas to lobby for the removal of a hold on Bill Northey’s Department of Agriculture nomination, Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz pressured Reynolds to reach a deal on the Renewable Fuel Standard.
Cruz has placed a hold on Northey’s nomination to USDA, who is currently serving as Iowa’s Agriculture Secretary. In a letter earlier this week to Reynolds, Cruz wrote that a group of senators he is leading do not wish to up-end the market for corn ethanol, but argued the real problem with the RFS is refiners being required to buy expensive renewable identification number credits, or RINs, to meet the EPA’s increasing biofuel targets, according to the Washington Examiner. Cruz noted in the letter that Iowa senators had placed similar holds on Environmental Protection Agency nominees to block their confirmations because of an uproar over the RFS. In the letter, Cruz tells Reynolds to negotiate a deal that allows corn farmers “to sell much more corn,” but without costing thousands of refinery workers their jobs.
From the National Association of Farm Broadcasting News Service.