In the News

By Ben Geman
The Hill
© October 31, 2011
Full story here

A House Energy and Commerce Committee Republican alleged Monday that the White House is setting up the Energy Department for a fall in the controversy over DOE’s loan programs.

The White House announced Friday that it had ordered an independent review of the DOE loan portfolio by a former Treasury Department official, a step that followed the collapse of DOE-backed California solar panel maker Solyndra two months ago.

“It certainly looks like they want the Department of Energy to take the fall,” said Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.) on Fox News.

“But one of the things we have already discovered in some of the emails is that there were a lot of White House figures who were encouraging DOE to go ahead and make the Solyndra loan. We want to see what they were doing on that loan in particular and who was putting pressure on whom, and why,” he said.

An Energy and Commerce Committee panel is likely to vote Thursday to subpoena the White House for internal communications about the Solyndra financing. The company received a $535 million loan guarantee in 2009.

The committee’s Solyndra investigation has not uncovered evidence of political favoritism, but emails show that the White House pressed administration officials to make a swift decision on the Solyndra loan guarantee in 2009.

They also show that there was disagreement within the administration on the wisdom of approving the loan guarantee.

A second company that received an Energy Department loan guarantee, Massachusetts-based Beacon Power Corp., filed for bankruptcy protection Sunday.