After years of rancor over ethanol, Cruz, Cornyn go head to head on reform
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/After-years-of-rancor-Cruz-Cornyn-take-12704805.php February 26, 2018
Standing before a crowd of cheering refinery workers in Philadelphia last week, Sen. Ted Cruz didn't spare anyone. He attacked not only the "swamp" culture of Washington, but Wall Street, "big corn," and the large, integrated oil companies he said were getting rich on ethanol regulations at the expense of "working men and women."
Meanwhile back in Washington, Sen. John Cornyn was closely watched by energy lobbyists, waiting for a sign on when he was going to release legislation adjusting the ethanol rules, known as the renewable fuel standard. His office declined an interview request, stating, "He's working hard to unify all stakeholders in a consensus effort to reform the renewable fuel standard."
Cruz and Cornyn are pursuing competing and widely disparate strategies to reduce the financial burden on oil refineries under the more than-decade old law requiring ethanol be blended into the nation's gasoline supply.
"It's almost like a good cop bad cop routine. Cruz proposes this really drastic change and then Cornyn comes in with a compromise," said Mark Jones, a politics professor at Rice University. "I don't think that's the case [they are working together], but it wouldn't surprise me if Cornyn saw Cruz's gambit and said there might be an opportunity here."
For Cornyn, a third-term senator, who as majority whip, is the number two Republican in the Senate, the strategy appears to be stay quiet and work to win over senators from the ethanol-friendly Midwest on a compromise bill.
Cruz, meanwhile, has taken a more aggressive approach, forcing attention on the issue by holding up the confirmation of President Donald Trump's nominee to be deputy secretary of agriculture. And with barnstorming speeches like he gave in Philadelphia last week, he has painted himself as a one-man wrecking crew working on behalf of the nation's oil refineries....
