White House Has To Answer Solyndra Subpoena Posted 07:01 PM ET
Scandal: A House committee has subpoenaed the White House's Solyndra documents. The administration refuses to comply. This isn't the way things work in a government where each branch keeps the other two honest.
Last Thursday, the House Energy and Commerce Committee asked the White House to turn over documents related to its decision to dole out $535 million in taxpayers' money to Solyndra, the green energy company that has gone bust and been raided by the FBI.
On Friday, the White House, through counsel Kathryn Ruemmler, said no. In a letter to Energy Committee Chairman Fred Upton and Rep. Cliff Stearns, who chairs Energy's oversight and investigations subcommittee, Ruemmler claimed the request was a "significant intrusion on executive branch interests."
Solyndra was this executive branch's darling, its model for the green economy that it thinks it can will into existence just because that's what it wants. President Obama visited the Solyndra plant himself last year, about two months after the loan was approved by his Energy Department. He declared the company to be one of the "true" engines of economic growth.
Obama was so convinced Solyndra was riding the crest of the first wave of the green economy, he wanted to hand it an additional $469 million — even though the White House was warned that Solyndra was in trouble soon after the $535 million loan was made.
Or maybe the president was simply doing a favor for George Kaiser, a major Obama fundraiser who also happened to be the top investor in Solyndra, and Steve Spinner, another bundler of Obama campaign contributions who, as an Energy Department adviser, pushed hard for the loan. Spinner is also married to a partner in the law firm that represented Solyndra.
The public deserves to know just how deep the roots of corruption go. Is this administration, which promised greater transparency, trying to cover up an extensive and ugly web of cronyism and political spoils?
Predictably, the White House is stonewalling, saying the subpoena is "driven more by partisan politics than a legitimate effort to conduct a responsible investigation."
The administration, though, is not superior to the law. If it continues to refuse, Congress has to come down hard on it. The presidency is not an imperial office that can exercise power any way it sees fit or consider itself above the other branches. That type of behavior has to be punished. |
