OPINION:
Late last week, we observed the 93rd birthday of Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican.
Mr. Grassley has the distinction, if that is the right word, of having served 52 years in Congress, most of it in the Senate and, taken together, a term of service longer than all but a handful of people in the history of the United States.
If you add his years in the state legislature, he has been at this for 68 years.
At the same time, as I am sure you have read, the current administration is concerned about the price of diesel fuel as well as the price of gasoline. That makes sense, given that the price of diesel — which affects the price of everything moved by truck (everything) — is hovering around $6 a gallon. The price of gasoline has been north of $4 a gallon for about a month.
It is bad enough that normally rational people (well, senators) are talking about nonsensical ideas such as preventing the export of refined fuels (including diesel), which will inevitably kink up transportation and refining processes and lead, perversely, to higher prices for diesel.
The Senate has not cornered the market on nonsense. In June, the president ordered the Justice Department to investigate oil companies with respect to why gas prices are so high.
Let me help the boys down at Main Justice: Prices are high because about 20% of the world’s supply is trapped on the wrong side of the Strait of Hormuz, which was closed as a result of a conflict whose purpose, provenance and timing were, to be kind, inexplicable.
The good news for the administration is that there is a simple, immediate solution: Suspend the ethanol mandate (also known as the renewable fuel standard). That mandate requires refining companies to blend into the gasoline supply an amount of ethanol and other bio-based fuels equal to about 10% of the total fuel consumed each year.
This mandate, like other government attempts to manage the marketplace, increases costs and reduces performance. According to some, the ethanol mandate costs drivers and their families about 45 cents extra per gallon, or, if you prefer big numbers, the total annual economic cost is estimated to be about $88 billion each year.
To put those 45 cents per gallon into context, the federal government takes a bit more than 18 cents per gallon in taxes. State governments take anywhere from 71 cents (California, of course) to 9 cents (Alaska) per gallon; the average is around 33 cents.
All this prompts a simple question: Why is the administration willing to investigate companies it knows to be blameless and rearrange the global market in diesel fuel rather than suspend a government mandate when such a suspension would immediately reduce pressure on gasoline prices?
This is where Mr. Grassley — whose home state of Iowa may profit more from the ethanol mandate than any other state — comes back into the story. Unless something odd happens, Mr. Grassley is going to be the senior Republican on the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary.
It does not take much imagination to think of a world in which the Democrats spend the next two years examining Team Trump — including family members — and its various investments.
Much of that will be done in or near the judiciary committees in both houses of Congress.
In such a world, it may be very important to the administration to have a senior senator on the Committee on the Judiciary on its side. At certain moments, such an ally might be more important than reducing the price of gasoline.
• Michael McKenna is a contributing editor at The Washington Times.
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