The Solyndra Mess A Republican inquiry into the failure of the solar company yields questions about due diligence but no serious answers on energy.
Even so, the hearings have raised legitimate questions about the Solyndra deal. Solyndra was the first beneficiary of the loan program and seemed to be an ideal candidate — a company with a new technology and lots of venture capital — for an administration eager to show results. So eager, in fact, that the White House appeared willing to ignore warnings from its own experts about rising competition in the solar panel market. E-mail exchanges released by Republicans from August 2009, as the loan neared approval, show that some officials in the Office of Management and Budget were beginning to worry that Chinese companies could threaten Solyndra’s sales with cheaper units; one official asked that “the announcement be postponed.” But those worries were dismissed, and the loan announcement went ahead as planned.
Those fears were not unfounded. By May 2010, when President Obama visited the company to trumpet green energy, the market had weakened and Solyndra was showing cracks. Yet the White House remained deeply invested in Solyndra’s success; according to one e-mail from an investor quoted by the Republicans, it asked the company to delay announcing layoffs until after the November 2010 elections. Given Solyndra’s prominence, layoffs would obviously have been embarrassing.
One other issue involves Mr. Chu’s decision to subordinate Solyndra’s loan to a new round of private financing last February, allowing private investors to move ahead of taxpayers in the event of a default. Republicans say this was illegal, but Mr. Chu says he had been assured by the loan program’s chief counsel that it was proper because new financing was essential to keep the company solvent. |
