Marking the one-year anniversary of the Solyndra investigation, the Republican National Committee released an infographic on President Obama’s supposed “insider deals.”

But after 187,000 documents, 10 hearings, and multiple independent media investigations concluding there was no evidence of political “pressure” to approve the loan guarantee, Republicans show no signs of ending the political games around Solyndra. In response to the RNC, Climate Progress created its own infographic that puts the politics-infused investigation into perspective:

And if you hadn’t seen it, here’s the RNC’s version:

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After 185,000 pages of documents, ten hearings, and two subpoenas, we still haven’t found any evidence improper behavior

by Richard W. Caperton

Today, the fruitless investigation into the Solyndra loan guarantee turns one year old. Sadly, fruit is the traditional gift on the fourth anniversary. So what do you give on a first-anniversary to someone who already demanded all the paper they could ever need for the rest of their lives?

On February 17, 2011, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton and Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Cliff Stearns sent a letter to Secretary of Energy Steven Chu requesting all DOE communication about the decision to issue a loan guarantee to Solyndra.  Thus began the most over-hyped, over-covered, and over-examined stories in recent memory — including Tim Tebow.

Since Upton and Stearns sent their letter, the House has received 185,000 pages of documents, held ten hearings, heard from 26 witnesses, and issued two subpoenas. Despite this, they have yet to find any evidence of improper behavior.

The key figure in the House investigation has been Stearns. Not since Ponce de Leon went searching for the Fountain of Youth has a Floridian led a less successful hunt for an illusive prize. To be fair to de Leon, at least he knew what he was looking for and had he found it, his youth would have been restored. Stearns didn’t even know what a loan guarantee was as recently as October, and this investigation is definitely getting old.

It’s not as if the House Republicans are the only people pursuing this story. The mainstream press has devoted countless column inches and hours of coverage to the Solyndra non-story, while virtually ignoring real scandals that are a full order of magnitude bigger in dollar terms.

While House Republicans have wasted day after day in hearings, independent analyses continue to find that the DOE loan guarantee program is actually exceeding expectations. Most recently, Herb Allison — John McCain’s former national finance chair — led a team of accountants and auditors who found that the Program will cost a full $2 billion less than DOE initially expected. This follows analyses by Bloomberg Government, who found “The focus on Solyndra is not proportional to its impact,” and the Congressional Research Service, who found that the great majority of guarantees were extremely low risk.

Instead of wasting more staff time and taxpayer dollars on a fishing expedition for political scandal, it’s time for the House to do things that can actually move clean energy forward and put Americans back to work, like extending the Production Tax Credit, passing a clean energy standard, and creating a Clean Energy Deployment Administration. That would be a gift all Americans would welcome.

Richard W. Caperton is director of clean energy finance at the Center for American Progress.

In an independent review, John McCain’s former National Finance Chairman finds the loan guarantee program was cost-effective for taxpayers

by Richard W. Caperton

Take a deep breath, because what I’m about to tell you may be shocking: loan guarantees for energy have been successful, cost-effective investments.

That’s the message from Herb Allison, former national finance chairman for John McCain, who led a team of accountants and auditors in conducting an independent analysis of the Department of Energy’s Loan Guarantee Program.  Allison and his team found that, despite the hysteria around Solyndra, this program will cost $2 billion less than initially expected.

Today, the White House released Allison’s review.  It includes an analysis of every loan guarantee issued from DOE, as well as recommendations for managing this portfolio of guarantees going forward.  This independent review was requested by the White House in late 2011, to make sure that the DOE loan guarantee portfolio was cost-effective for taxpayers.

The Allison review confirms what we already know, thanks to the Congressional Research Service and Bloomberg Government.  Instead of looking at individual investments, CRS examined the entire DOE portfolio, and concluded that the overwhelming majority of the portfolio was in electrical generation projects, which DOE structured to have very low risk.  Bloomberg Government took that a step forward, and concluded that the media’s incessant focus on Solyndra was “not proportional to its impact.”

There are multiple reasons why the risks to taxpayers from this program are so low.  First, most of the guarantees went to support projects that have very secure contracts to sell their power to investment-grade rated utilities. Allison and his team of independent auditors endorsed the methodology that DOE initially used to evaluate these types of projects, writing, “The Independent Consultant used the same Nine Criteria as did DOE because, in the opinion of the Independent Consultant, they comprise the salient factors for evaluating the credits and are substantially similar to the criteria that would be employed by private sector credit analysts for these types of loans.”

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Perhaps a bit flustered from losing three primary races a day earlier to fellow GOP presidential contender Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney got his energy talking points confused at a campaign rally in Atlanta, Georgia on Wednesday.

Speaking about his plan to encourage domestic energy production, Romney got the solar company Solyndra and the Keystone tar sands pipeline mixed up:

“My course for America is to become energy secure and to open up that Solyndra – that, that pipeline, excuse me, the Keystone pipeline,” Romney told about 400 supporters at a stone importing company in northern Atlanta. “Not Solyndra. … The Keystone pipeline to get energy here in this country.”

The small stumble could have been a good opportunity for Romney to throw some support behind solar as an important domestic energy source. After all, the industry was the “fastest growing in America” for two years in a row, supports more than 100,000 direct and indirect jobs in all 50 states, and accounted for a $1.9 billion trade surplus in 2010.

Instead, Romney quickly fell back to his talking points and called federal loan guarantees an example of “crony capitalism.”

The Solyndra slip up is not the first for a Republican presidential candidate. Last December, Texas Governor and former candidate Rick Perry thought Solyndra (which he called “Solynda”) was a country that America gave money to.

 

Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS has released a new smear ad criticizing President Obama on the administration’s investment in the solar company Solyndra. The $500,000 ad is scheduled to run throughout the week, nationwide.

As President Obama said in his State of the Union address, his administration is committed to the promise of American clean energy, even though some companies may fail to others in the marketplace. 180,000 pages of documents from a Congressional investigation confirmed that the Department of Energy’s investment in the advanced technology of Solyndra was based on the merits.

The group, created by Karl Rove and former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie, launched their 35-second TV spot dishonestly painting “the Solyndra loan guarantee as a corrupt deal aimed at benefiting the president’s campaign donors,” the Hill reports:

“He gave his political backers billions – a big government fiasco- infused with politics at every level,” says a female narrator over the obligatory “SE7EN”-style, cut-and-paste imagery typical of super-PAC attack ads. “Laid off worker: forgotten. Typical Washington. Tell President Obama we need jobs not more inside deals.”

This is the second Crossroads GPS attack ad that uses Solyndra as a scapegoat for the clean economy.

Fossil-fueled conservatives are dead set on turning their imagined Solyndra scandal into a coordinated attack on the clean energy industry. The Crossroads GPS campaign is only the latest in a string of attack ads meant to play up the Solyndra bankruptcy as a potential liability for Obama in the coming election year. To date, Americans for Prosperity, the front group for the petrochemical billionaire Koch brothers, has spent over $8 million in battleground states — Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin — on two intentionally misleading ads taking aim at President Obama over Solyndra.

-Fatima Najiy

What’s the only thing worse than turning a Congressional investigation into a months-long political circus? The leaders of that investigation not having a firm grasp of the policies they’re supposed to be examining.

California Republican Darrell Issa chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, one of the top bodies responsible for looking into the loan guarantee to the now-bankrupt solar manufacturer Solyndra. So you’d think that Mr. Issa would, after almost four months of investigation, be able to distinguish the extraordinary differences between a tax credit and a loan guarantee.

You would, sadly, be wrong.

In a shockingly ignorant commentary on the President’s State of the Union address last night, Issa blamed tax credits — the foundation of energy policy in this country — on the Solyndra bankruptcy, calling them a “scandal.” He was responding to this tweet, which was a response to the President’s call for Congress to extend vital tax credits for wind and other clean energies:

In a YouTube video message, Issa explained:

“We know that not only doesn’t it work out, but there are loads of additional scandals coming out and certainly the Administration is trying to double down on his ability to play political favoritism in the name of clean energy.”

Never mind that Issa has been a strong supporter of loan guarantees for nuclear energy and has requested multiple grants for clean energy companies in his district. Issa has also been a vociferous supporter of permanent tax credits for the oil and gas industry, which he calls absolutely necessary for job creation.

Yet, somehow, Issa and his colleagues in Congress have been completely silent on extending expiring short-term tax credits for the wind industry — a lapse that may cost the American wind industry 37,000 jobs next year. And when asked for his characterization of tax credits for clean energy, Issa gets them confused with loan guarantees and calls them a “scandal.”

For the record, here is the gaping difference between the two:

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