Sen. Jay Rockefeller is questioning President Obama’s policy on coal, saying during a recent Senate committee hearing that the president is “beginning to not be believable to me.”

According to published reports, Rockefeller, D-W.Va., first took issue with the administration’s decision to eliminate $2.3 billion in tax breaks for the coal industry.

“It’s going to be partly psychological,” Rockefeller told White House budget director Peter Orszag at a Senate Finance Committee hearing earlier this month.

“People are going to reduce their production because they feel, ‘Uh oh, here comes the Obama administration,’ and they are going to cut out coal.”

Rockefeller then said his concerns heightened when he considered recent actions by the Environmental Protection Agency on mountaintop mining permits and work on regulations to control greenhouse gas emissions.

He said he isn’t sure he trusts the president’s commitments to coal, even as Obama promotes coal through other administration actions.

“He says it in his speeches, but he doesn’t say it here,” Rockefeller said, referring to the president’s budget proposal. “He doesn’t say it in the actions of (EPA Administrator) Lisa Jackson. And he doesn’t say it in the minds of my own people. And he’s beginning to not be believable to me.

“So I want you to put me at rest or put me away.”

Orszag cited a new task force, announced by Obama at a Feb. 3 White House meeting with Gov. Joe Manchin and other energy-state governors, that aims to start five to 10 carbon capture and storage commercial demonstration projects around the country by 2016. He also cited a budget request of more than $500 million for research and development for carbon storage.

The budget chief said the president wants Congress to pass a comprehensive climate bill capping greenhouse gas emissions, claiming the program would generate billions more for carbon storage.

But Rockefeller pushed back at the Obama budget request, saying it fell well short of what was necessary to prompt widespread deployment of clean coal technologies. He also said the new task force had some of the same goals as already existing programs.

Following the hearing, Rockefeller said his complaints didn’t rest with the budget.

“It’s not a question of money, it’s a question of the overall approach,” he said. “I just wonder whether they really do understand the importance of coal, the fact the nation can’t exist without it.”

Rockefeller said he supports a comprehensive climate change bill, though he was doubtful the Senate could reach agreement on a bill capable of winning 60 votes by the Democratic leaders’ timetable of this spring.

“I’ve got to be satisfied,” he said. “There’s some coal-state senators like myself that have to be satisfied ...”

Rockefeller was an early supporter of Obama in the 2008 presidential race, endorsing the Illinois senator well ahead of the West Virginia Democratic primary, which Obama lost to New York Sen. Hillary Clinton.