President Bush is Tone Deaf on Biofuel

President Bush is amazingly tone deaf on the outcome of his biofuel mandate. In an address on climate change yesterday he touted the legislation he pushed last year to require “fuel producers to supply at least 36 billion gallons of renewable fuel by 2022.” He argued that “This should provide an incentive for shifting to a new generation of fuels like cellulosic ethanol that will reduce concerns about food prices and the environment.”

But this mandate has helped drive up fuel prices today. There have been riots all of the world because of the high price of food and the UN Special Rapporteur for the Right to Food, Jean Ziegler, told German radio Monday that the production of biofuels is “a crime against humanity.”

Not only is the biofuel mandate causing people to go hungry, the environmental costs are significant. Today’s biofuel production releases more greenhouse gases than petroleum production and we are turning miles and miles of jungle into biofuel plantations.

It’s amazing that President Bush could be so tone deaf about the problems with today’s biofuel. Biofuel may work tomorrow, but with today’s technology is accomplishes little and hurts a lot of people.

Hey Big Spender

President Bush has managed to spend money at a rate that is unparalleled in modern times:

If President Bush’s budget for fiscal 2009 is approved in its current form, U.S. government spending will have increased by more than $1.2 trillion since President Clinton left office; adjusted for inflation, that’s a 35% increase. Bush has increased spending at three times the rate Clinton did when he was president, and also has given us the biggest defense budget since World War II — and that’s regularly budgeted defense spending, not counting funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

…

The president’s projections show the budget running a surplus of $48 billion by fiscal 2012. That fantastical figure includes some rosy assumptions — that the Democrats in Congress enact Bush’s proposal to trim the growth of Medicare and Medicaid by $195.7 billion over five years; that the alternative minimum tax is allowed to hit more taxpayers after the 2008 tax year; and that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are not funded beyond fiscal 2009. Even if all that came true, the White House should be focusing on reducing the size of government, not just reducing overspending.

The $3.1-trillion fiscal 2009 budget proposal represents Bush’s last chance to establish his legacy. Unfortunately, it will be one of massive deficit spending that will be paid for by generations to come.