The Congressional Budget Office finds that “increased use of ethanol accounted for about 10 percent to 15 percent of the rise in food prices between April 2007 and April 2008.”

In turn, increases in food prices will boost federal spending for mandatory nutrition programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as Food Stamps) and the school lunch program by an estimated $600 million to $900 million in fiscal year 2009. The Special Supplemental Assistance Program for Women, Infants, and Children—better known as WIC—is a discretionary program that provides a specific basket of goods to recipients rather than a set cash benefit, so changes in food prices in 2008 had an immediate impact on costs for the program.

Okay, so federal ethanol programs cost us on our tax bill, our grocery bill, and our gas bill… but we must be getting a pretty substantial environmental benefit, right?

Last year the use of ethanol reduced gasoline usage in the United States by about 4 percent and greenhouse-gas emissions from the transportation sector by less than 1 percent. The future impact of ethanol on greenhouse-gas emissions is unclear. Research suggests that in the short run, the production, distribution, and consumption of ethanol will create about 20 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions than the equivalent processes for gasoline. In the long run, if increases in the production of ethanol led to a large amount of forests or grasslands being converted into new cropland, those changes in land use could more than offset any reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions—because forests and grasslands naturally absorb more carbon from the atmosphere than cropland absorbs.

Oh. I guess not.