April 25, 2008 (LPAC)--On August 4, 1994, Al Gore cast the crucial vote which set the United States on the road to taking food out of the mouths of millions, by using food for fuel.

His vote was cast in the U.S. Senate, in his capacity as U.S. Vice President, to break a 50-50 tie. Gore's vote killed an anti-ethanol measure sponsored by two Democratic Senators, Bill Bradley of New Jersey and Bennett Johnston of Louisiana. Gore thus upheld a new federal rule requiring that ethanol and similar crop-based fuels be added to the nation's gasoline.

Gore thus ensured that a growing proportion of the world's food supply would be burned, instead of feeding people.

The New York Times reported, "With a tie-breaking vote by Vice President Al Gore, the Senate today .... voted 51-50 to table an amendment that would have denied financing to the [Environmental Protection Agency] to carry out a rule guaranteeing renewable fuels a 15 percent share of the lucrative fuel oxygenate market in 1995. That share rises to 30 percent in following years.... Tabling the [Bradley/Johnston] amendment in effect kills it and clears the way for E.P.A. to carry out its program."

The Times commented that "critics ... said it was a boon to the Archer Daniels Midland Company, a corn processing giant, which has more than 60 percent of the ethanol market."

Four years after the vote, Gore was still boasting about his central role in perpetrating the ethanol craze. Speaking December 1, 1998 at the Third Annual Farm Journal Conference, Gore said, "I was also proud to stand up for the ethanol tax exemption (sic) when it was under attack in the Congress--at one point, supplying a tie-breaking vote in the Senate to save it.''