I'm sure you know much more about it than I do, but:

Panic + politics = half-assed ideas sold as proper solutions for the sake of votes.

Corn-based ethanol is total shit. Energy-wise, it currently costs almost exactly as much to produce it as it provides. Almost 5 times worse than gasoline in that regard. There's nothing "green" about corn-based ethanol. You reduce CO2 emissions by 15% in vehicles yet add ludicrous amounts of polluting infrastructure to produce the fuel.

And you just KNOW the lobbying on the side of the corn farmers will push aside any semi-intelligent ethanol production method (cellulose-based and others) and there's plennnty of time for them to sink their feet in deep and get a good grip on that tug-of-war rope. Reasonable ethanol production methods are far far away from any scale that is even a tiny dent in US gasoline consumption levels.

It would be just like America to do something as fucking moronic as lay out a gajillion acres of new corn crops over the next few years and burn almost exactly the amount of energy to produce corn-based ethanol as the ethanol itself will produce.

*thumbs up*