Sen. Tom Coburn: “I’m not for tax increases, but I don’t think this is a tax increase. This is stupidity at its height.”

From The Washington Post:

The anti-tax pledge signed by 95 percent of congressional Republicans faces a key test Tuesday, when the Senate is scheduled to vote on a plan to repeal billions of dollars in annual tax credits for ethanol blenders — a move the pledge defines as a tax increase.

The ethanol credit is widely condemned by Republicans as bad economic policy, and Coburn derides it as spending through the tax code. But a vote to kill it would represent a significant break with more than two decades of GOP tax orthodoxy, which prohibits increasing revenue by any means other than economic growth.

Coburn has argued that Republicans must abandon that orthodoxy to forge a compromise with Democrats on a viable plan to rein in the spiraling national debt.

“I’m not for tax increases, but I don’t think this is a tax increase. This is stupidity at its height,” Coburn said in an interview Friday. “If you vote to give the richest oil companies in this country $3 billion between now and the end of December, then you don’t get it. You are absolutely confused about what the problems are in this country.”

Ethanol subsidies have become a flash point in political debate in recent months, with a broad coalition of environmentalists, livestock producers and consumer groups opposing government subsidies for the industry. Up to 40 percent of the nation’s corn crop is diverted to make an alternative fuel that is blended with gasoline. The tax credit does not go to farmers but to fuel blenders, including major oil companies.