EDITORIAL : SAME OLD CONGRESS; WASTEFUL ETHANOL TAX GIVEAWAY REMAINS ALIVE.

GOVERNMENT favors that serve little purpose other than to reward politically potent special-interest groups seem to lead a charmed life in Washington.

A case in point is ethanol, a corn-based fuel additive. The Senate Finance Committee agreed last week to extend a tax break for ethanol through 2007, notwithstanding a report by Congress' General Accounting Office pointing out that ethanol has done little to reduce air pollution or ease the nation's dependency on imported oil.

Rep. Bill Archer, a Texas Republican who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee, had sought to eliminate the subsidy from the tax bill enacted earlier this year. ``If we're going to change Washington by eliminating wasteful government spending, we should start by allowing this subsidy to expire,'' Archer said.

But Archer was outmaneuvered in the House after farm state lawmakers took their case to House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Rewarding supporters is one of the things that speakers commonly do in order to keep their jobs.

Defenders of the subsidy tried to deflect criticism by saying that Archer was just trying to protect oil producers in his home state.

That's beside the point. The fact of the matter is that ethanol accounts for less than 1 percent of the fuel consumed in this country.

Yet the ethanol tax credit will cost the highway trust fund $200 million through 2007, according to the Joint Taxation Committee. The GAO estimated that the subsidy has cost the highway fund $7.1 billion since it was enacted during an oil embargo in the 1970s.

That's something frustrated motorists might want to keep in mind when federal politicians plead poverty when asked to fix serious problems on interstate highways.