Several key Democrats have reacted strongly (to put it mildly) to the Obama Administration’s proposals for biofuels standards. From the Des Moines Register:

A key House Democrat, the chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, lashed out at the Obama administration today over its biofuels analysis and said he would likely oppose a climate-change bill because of it.

“The only way I would consider any kind of climate-change bill is if it was ironclad that these agencies don’t have authority to do any kind of rulemaking whatsoever,” Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn., said at the beginning of a hearing on biofuels policy this morning.

It’s safe to say that’s not going to happen. The climate bill being developed in the House will almost certainly give the administration wide authority to regulate both emissions of greenhouse gases and potential offsets such as reduced crop tillage.

The 2007 energy bill said that biofuels had to meet targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in order to qualify toward being used for meeting usage mandates. The EPA was required to analysis the greenhouse gas emissions and told to account for the land-use impacts of using food crops for biofuels.

Peterson told administration officials that they were ”going to kill off” the biofuels industry “before it even gets started.” . . .

Another Democrat, Earl Pomeroy of North Dakota, said he agreed with Peterson’s concerns and felt that many other members did, too. Rep. Tim Holden, D-Pa., also seconded Peterson.

Kate McMahon of Friends of the Earth had this response to Peterson’s “hissy fit,” . . .

And from Reuters, some additional details:

“I want this message sent back down the street. I will not support any climate change bill. I don’t trust anybody anymore,” said the Democrat from Minnesota.

A leader among fiscally conservative Democrats, Peterson is the first committee chairman to declare opposition to climate change legislation, an administration priority. He said he spoke to White House senior advisor Pete Rouse earlier on Wednesday about his dissatisfaction with the treatment of ethanol and concerns that a climate-change bill would hurt agriculture.

The administration issued a draft rule on Tuesday aiming to cut greenhouse gasses associated with biofuels by making production of corn-based ethanol more efficient and increasing production of advanced biofuels. Corn ethanol has been criticized for contributing to higher food prices and indirectly causing greenhouse gas emissions by forcing forests and other lands to be burned abroad to create farmland.

Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has a goal of sending a climate-change bill to the House floor by the end of May. It is not clear if there is enough support to pass a climate bill. Peterson said he would oppose Waxman’s bill. . . “This thing is out of control,” he said. “I’ve had it.”