Republican candidate for Iowa’s 4th Congressional District, Bret Richards of Irwin, says President Trump needs to fire Andrew Wheeler, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In a press release, Richards explains this is the next logical step after the agency reneged on the draft rule; an intent to live up to the president’s promise to biofuels producers. “In one fell swoop, Andrew Wheeler has decided he’s not going to follow the rules as outlined by President Trump and Congress,” Richards says. “Congress needs to take decisive, definitive, long-term action to fix the issue once and for all, but in the meantime, President Trump should call Andrew Wheeler into the Oval Office and utter his most famous phrase, ‘You’re fired!’” Two weeks ago, the White House and EPA said they would account for Small Refinery Exemptions (SREs) using a three-year rolling average of actual exemptions granted. But a mere 11 days later, the EPA reversed course and issued a proposal that follows U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) recommendations. These have no legal weight and are routinely ignored according to Richards. “It is ridiculous to expect Iowa farmers and producers to put their trust in the EPA to fix this when they’re the ones who created the chaos in the first place,” he says. “All of the ethanol plants that were making plans to stay open for the rest of the year have to reexamine what they’re going to do. We’re on the verge of losing an entire industry in Iowa, an industry that supports thousands of jobs and is a major part of this state’s economy.” Richards says Iowans are tired of “being jerked around.” He wants to see rock-solid certainty with the Renewable Fuel Standard’s requirement that 15 billion gallons of ethanol be blended with gasoline, and not a drop less.
