Earlier this week Ron Bailey made note of the excellent investigation by the Associated Press about the amount of environmental harm caused by the federal government's insistence on pushing forward with mandated ethanol in gasoline.

Today, the Environmental Protection Agency announced it wants to scale back the mandate that determines how much ethanol fuel producers will be required to add to gasoline. Back to the Associated Press:

The Obama administration on Friday proposed to reduce the amount of ethanol in the nation's fuel supply for the first time, acknowledging that the biofuel law championed by both parties in 2007 is not working as well as expected. While the proposal highlights the government's struggle to ramp up production of homegrown biofuels that are cleaner-burning than gasoline, it is unlikely to mean much for consumers at the pump. The change would reduce by almost 3 billion gallons the amounts of ethanol and other biofuels blended into gasoline in 2014 than the law requires.

Ethanol representatives are threatening to sue, of course. The cynic in me theorizes some backdoor federal subsidy will reimburse them of any losses should corn prices drop due to oversupply.

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