WASHINGTON D.C. — IER President Thomas Pyle sent a letter today to four congressional chairmen calling for an “immediate, exhaustive and unyielding” investigation of the Defense Department’s decision to fuel naval exercises in the Pacific ocean using biofuels that cost $27 per gallon. The letter was sent to Chairman Buck McKeon of the House Armed Services Committee, Chairman Carl Levin of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Chairman Darrell Issa of the House Oversight Committee, and Chairman Joseph Lieberman of the Senate Government Affairs Committee.

“The Obama administration’s push to develop the biofuel industry around America’s military is a textbook example of government cronyism . . . The American people have a right to know if the Defense Department is awarding their tax dollars to certain biofuel industries for reasons other than strategic military purposes,” Pyle wrote.

“Already the government’s joint ventures with biofuel companies are creating ripe opportunities for waste, fraud and abuse . . . For the Defense Department to launch so boldly into partnerships with renewable industries fast becoming known for financial insolvency and fraud appears to be more about shoring up the administration’s failing green energy agenda than about securing the future of our sea and air power supremacy.

“The Obama administration is squandering limited national defense dollars on a political agenda premised on their insistence that the United States has insufficient supplies of conventional energy sources to meet our current needs. This claim is false, and the agenda it informs is wrongheaded.”

To read the full text of Pyle’s letter, click here.

###