I use baseball analogies a lot. Part of it is that I am a long-suffering Red Sox fan and I find it therapeutic. But the other reason is that everything I ever really needed to know about Washington I learned in Little League. While my Little League teams, like the Red Sox, were never very good, I did learn the only way to win is to play as a team.

In the game of politics, there are no limits to the number of teammates one can have. The most successful teams are the ones with the most players. If we are successful in our effort to secure a robust renewable fuels standard (RFS) in the energy bill, clarify the small producer tax credit for farmer-owned cooperatives, and resolve the Highway Trust Fund issue, it will be because of the unprecedented coalition we have built over the past few years to promote the increased production and use of fuel ethanol.

The coalition begins with ethanol producers and farmers seeking value-added markets for grain. The Renewable Fuels Association, National Corn Growers Association, American Farm Bureau Federation, National Farmers Union, American Coalition for Ethanol, Ethanol Producers and Consumers, and countless others have done yeoman's work getting the message about ethanol's economic benefits to all corners of the country.

But we added more teammates. By working with the National Biodiesel Board and the American Soybean Association to assure the inclusion of biodiesel in the RFS, we have expanded our political base. With the increased production of ethanol from grain sorghum, the National Grain Sorghum Producers joined our team and generated support for ethanol in non-corn states.

The RFS team extends beyond the grain belt to the oil patch and the coasts where increased farm income may not be important, but flexibility in gasoline production and eliminating the use of MTBE certainly are. Thus, the American Petroleum Institute (API) and environmental groups such as Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management (NESCAUM), American Lung Association, Union of Concerned Scientists, Renewable Energy Action Project (REAP), Energy and Environmental Study Institute, and several others now are part of our team as well.

Make no mistake; the support we have gotten from API and the environmental community has changed the political landscape. But to keep our team together, we will need to keep the three legs of the RFS legislative stool together - elimination of the federal RFG oxygen requirement, phase out of MTBE, and a 5 billion gallon RFS.

Recently, we've drafted support from highway advocates as our resolution to their Highway Trust Fund concerns was such a hit. Finally, consumer groups such as US Action are now pitching for the RFS as a means of reducing gasoline costs.

Sometimes I look at the team we have and I know what it must be like to play for the Yankees. Then I return to my senses and get back to work because another lesson I learned as a Little Leaguer was: "It ain't over til it's over!"




Bob Dinneen
President and CEO,
Renewable Fuels Association