Congress already has authorized billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded subsidies for farmers who grow corn and the producers who turn it into the fuel that's pumped into your car.

Never mind that ethanol is helping spike food prices. Corn prices have increased by 70 percent since 2005, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects they will rise an additional 10 to 20 percent this year.

But that's not the half of it. Corn-dependent livestock also are increasing in price. The USDA estimates that corn feed price increases added nearly 9 percent to the price of beef last year. But this doesn't include the indirect costs. U.S. beef cattle herds declined by 338,000 in 2007, increasing beef prices further, in part, because of higher prices for feed, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation.

Ethanol advocates claim that rising corn costs have contributed only modestly to the overall increase in food prices. They're not being entirely honest, as they're only counting the direct costs of ethanol. They don't count, for example, increases in soybean prices resulting from farmers switching to the more lucrative corn crop.

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