If Chu was keeping the taxpayer in mind, why was the loan restructured so Solyndra's private investors were moved to the front of the line and taxpayers were put on the hook for at least the first $75 million if the company should default?
Steven Chu Should Lose His Job Over The Solyndra Scandal
...........................................................................................................
11/17/2011
news.investors.com
Corruption: The Secretary of Energy takes responsibility for and defends the granting of a half-billion-dollar-loan guarantee to an imploding solar panel maker. But that's not where the campaign donor buck stopped.
In testimony Thursday before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Steven Chu, caught in a tangled web of administration deceit regarding a $535 million guaranteed loan to Solyndra, tried but failed to continue the administration line that the affair was just a good-faith bet that went bad.
"As the Secretary of Energy, the final decisions on Solyndra were mine, and I made them with the best interest of the taxpayer in mind," Chu claimed in his opening statement. "I want to be clear: Over the course of Solyndra's loan guarantee, I did not make any decision based on political considerations."
If political considerations were not involved, then explain the Oct. 30, 2010, email in which advisers to Solyndra's primary investor, Argonaut Equity, said the Energy Department had strongly urged the company to put off an announcement of looming layoffs until Nov. 3, the day after the midterm elections in which President Obama's failed stimulus was a hot issue.
In point of fact, newly disclosed emails show Democratic fundraiser and Solyndra investor George Kaiser talked directly with White House officials about the now-bankrupt solar company's $535 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy.
Kaiser, a major Obama bundler and backer who raised $50,000 to $100,000 for the president's election campaign, was one of Solyndra's primary investors. Kaiser himself donated $53,500 to Obama's 2008 election campaign, split between the DSCC and Obama for America.
In a March 5 email, Kaiser wrote to Solyndra board member Steve Mitchell: "BTW, a couple of weeks ago, when Ken and I were visiting with a group of Administration folks in DC who are in charge of the stimulus process (White House, not DOE) and Solyndra came up, every one of them responded simultaneously about their thorough knowledge of the Solyndra story, suggesting it was one of their prime poster children."
"Ken" is Ken Levit, executive director of the Kaiser Family Foundation, who wrote the following in an email to Mitchell on Feb. 27, 2010: "They about had an orgasm in Biden's office when we mentioned Solyndra."
If Chu was keeping the taxpayer in mind, why was the loan restructured so Solyndra's private investors were moved to the front of the line and taxpayers were put on the hook for at least the first $75 million if the company should default? This arrangement, subordinating taxpayers to private investors, is an "apparent violation of the law," according to Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Chu told the committee that restructuring "improved the chance of recovering taxpayer money by giving the company a fighting chance at success, with a completed plant as collateral." The decision also meant continued employment for the company's approximately 1,100 workers, he said.
Yet when asked how much money taxpayers might get back, Chu said: "Well, that remains to be seen. I'm anticipating not very much." The 1,100 Solyndra workers Chu said he was trying to keep have lost their jobs anyway.
According to Chu, the "Solyndra transaction went through more than two years of rigorous technical, financial and legal due diligence," a statement that ignores the warnings from accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers that Solyndra and its business model were not viable.
Due diligence? Emails showed White House officials repeatedly asking the Office of Management and Budget on the loan review's progress. One email from a budget official referred to "the time pressure we are under to sign off on Solyndra" and referred to "a situation of having to do rushed approvals." They were under pressure to approve the loan so Vice President Biden could make the grand photo-op announcement.
"This deal is NOT ready for prime time," one budget analyst wrote in a March 10, 2009, email. Another message — dated Aug. 31, 2009, written by an OMB staffer and sent to Terrell P. McSweeney, Biden's domestic policy adviser — concluded, "We would prefer to have sufficient time to do our due diligence reviews." In fact, they were not done prior to President Obama's visit to the beleaguered firm.
There was no due diligence done in the awarding of taxpayer dollars to a firm everybody knew had an unsustainable business model in an industry largely kept afloat by taxpayer subsidies. Political considerations and donor cash had everything to do with the loan.
If Secretary Chu wants to accept responsibility for this fiasco, fine. For starters, we'll gladly welcome his resignation. |
