President elect Barack Obama will name Colorado Senator Ken Salazar as Interior Secretary, and former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack as Secretary of Agriculture today. Vilsack, as Governor of corn producing Iowa, has been a big proponent of biofuels. Both he and Obama have supported taxpayer subsidy for ethanol, and that will be a major issue facing the new administration. From the New York Times:

“The big issue for him and any incoming secretary is going to be biofuels, that’s the sector that right now is in such a volatile position,” said Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit group that is a leading critic of federal farm subsidies. American farmers, Mr. Cook said, are “hitched to both the food system and the energy system, both of which are oscillating.”

Vilsack’s history would lead us to believe that it should be business as usual for the agriculture industry, with support for subsidizing ethanol, opposition through tariff duties to the importation of sugar ethanol from South America, and huge boondoggles through other farm bill subsidies. But Obama specifically pointed to the rampant abuses in farm bills as a likely source of savings as he examines the federal budget. What will it be?