Is there a new intra-GOP war brewing -- a sequel to the Tea Party's big victory in the battle over earmarks? Fresh off a big victory over the GOP establishment on earmarks, conservative GOP senators are opening up a new front in the battle on government spending that could be similar to the earmarks standoff: They are calling on Congress to let billions in ethanol subsidies expire.
Senators Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn, two leading conservative Senators who have pushed the GOP to be serious about its anti-spending rhetoric, told me they are calling on fellow Republicans to urge Congress to allow ethanol subsidies to expire -- something that could put other leading GOP Senators in an awkward spot and subject them (in theory) to the wrath of the anti-government-spending Tea Party if they don't go along.
As conservative writer Timothy Carney argued the other day, the question of whether to let the ethanol subsidies expire is the perfect test of whether the GOP is serious about its anti-spending rhetoric, since some senators -- such as Orrin Hatch and Chuck Grassley -- have supported them in the past.
With billions in ethanol subsidies set to expire this year, including a 45-cent-a-gallon tax credit for ethanol blenders that heaped nearly $5 billion on to the deficit last year, it appears senators DeMint and Coburn are dead serious about pressing the point.
DeMint, who bucked the GOP establishment by successfully rounding up enough support for an earmarks ban, said in a statement emailed my way:
"Government mandates and tax subsidies for ethanol have led to decreased gas mileage, adversely effected the environment and increased food prices. Washington must stop picking winners and losers in the market, and instead allow Americans to make choices for themselves."
"We need to let the ethanol subsidies expire and we need energy developed based on market forces," Senator Coburn added in an interview with me. He said Senators who are not willing to let them expire are "just protecting a parochial interest ahead of the national interest." Coburn added that a failure to let the subsidies expire would show that Republicans were not heeding the message their electoral victory sent about reining in spending -- precisely what Tea Partyers argued about earmarks.
"What we need to quit doing is digging the hole deeper," Coburn said. "I thought a lot of Americans said that on November 2nd. There shouldn't be anything that's sacrosanct."
This offers Dems an opening to exacerbate GOP divisions, and creates the prospect of an unusual alliance between conservative Republicans and green groups who are urging Dems to get serious about nixing the subsidies. As Steve Benen noted the other day, pushing for an expiration of the subsidies "could be a carefully-applied wedge, driving divisions between the party's activists and the party's corporate benefactors."
It's hard to know right now whether the ethanol subsidies issue has any chance of gaining the traction the battle over earmarks did. It will depend on how hard DeMint pushes the issue, and also on whether it catches fire among Tea Partyers and right wing bloggers, as the earmarks fight did. But this is definitely one that bears watching.
