Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee visited a biorefinery in Corning Tuesday to highlight his support of the Renewable Fuels Standard — and his criticism of the Obama Administration’s decision to scale back ethanol production levels. “The government says they’re going to implement standards, implement a plan. They need to stick with it not only because there are thousands of jobs at stake, but also because they were the ones that created the mandate causing people to make huge investments,” Huckabee says. “They’ve made those investments and they shouldn’t have the government now pull the rug out from under them.”

The Environmental Protection Agency’s guideline for 2016 ethanol production is below 2007 levels. Huckabee says billions of dollars has been invested in the ethanol industry and it’s working. “Fuel costs for the average American are down by 16 percent due to the Renewable Fuel Standards. The enviromental impact has been significantly improved because of RFS,” Huckabee says. “Now you have the very government that urged people to get into renewable fuels trying to dial the whole program back. That, frankly, makes no sense.”

Huckabee is also questioning President Obama’s focus on climate change. Huckabee says the country “needs a commander-in-chief, not a weather-obsessed meteorologist.” Huckabee says Obama might take ISIS more seriously if he learned “they didn’t recycle.”

(Radio Iowa)