(Bloomberg News) House Republicans will open a new line of attack against President Barack Obama's energy loan program by focusing on two solar projects that won about $1.6 billion in U.S. backing.
The Oversight and Investigations Committee yesterday released e-mails that Republicans said suggested the projects, developed by Tempe, Arizona-based First Solar Inc., weren't sufficiently innovative or different from one another to receive the guarantees. Democrats said Republicans cherry-picked from the thousands of pages of Energy Department e-mails to score political points in an election year.
A committee hearing today shifts the Republican focus beyond Solyndra LLC's $535 million loan guarantee to the department's broader loan program funded by the 2009 economic stimulus. It also extends the use of Obama's energy policies as a line of attack for Republicans, who have sought to tie Obama to rising gasoline prices.
"It is now clear that the Department of Energy has spent the last three years supporting projects that have yet to deliver on innovation, accountability or job creation," Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican and chairman of the oversight committee, said in a statement.
Solyndra, a Fremont, California-based solar-panel maker, filed for bankruptcy protection in September, two years after winning the loan guarantee.
Chu To Testify
Energy Secretary Steven Chu, who defended Solyndra's loan in a November appearance before a House Energy and Commerce Committee panel, is expected to testify at the hearing today.
Chu said in his prepared testimony, released yesterday, that the agency put in place "an aggressive monitoring system to ensure that the department and its grantees spend Recovery Act funds wisely and that taxpayers get the value they deserve."
Critics were selectively releasing e-mails to invent a "false and misleading controversy" surrounding the loan- guarantee program, Damien LaVera, a department spokesman, said in an e-mail.
"The department backed loans for two innovative solar projects that will support hundreds of jobs and provide clean power to tens of thousands of homes," LaVera said.