WASHINGTON, DC - House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI) and Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Cliff Stearns (R-FL) today responded to the FBI’s morning raid of the Department of Energy’s flagship loan guarantee recipient, now-bankrupt Solyndra. Committee leaders, who have been conducting a six-month investigation into the Solyndra loan guarantee, were not made aware of the pending raid.
Upton and Stearns made the following statement:
“The FBI raid further underscores that Solyndra was a bad bet from the beginning and put taxpayers at unnecessary risk. President Obama’s signature green jobs program went from a darling of the administration, to bankruptcy, to now the subject of an FBI raid in a matter of days. As our investigation continues, we hope to hear directly from Solyndra’s executives next week - the same executives who visited Capitol Hill as part of a PR campaign in July and misrepresented the company’s financial situation.
“Over the last six months, our investigation has encountered a number of needless partisan roadblocks and repeated pushback, protest, and even misleading claims on Solyndra’s viability by administration officials, company executives, and congressional Democrats. Irresponsibly choosing winners and losers on projects like Solyndra is a perilous and often doomed method to create jobs. There is much to learn as the investigation moves forward, and it is imperative that the American taxpayers are not paying the price for the sins of Solyndra."
The Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations had previously scheduled a hearing on the Solyndra loan guarantee for next Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2011. The following Administration officials and Solyndra executives have been invited to testify:
OMB Deputy Director Jeffrey Zients
Executive Director of DOE’s Loans Programs Office Jonathan Silver
Solyndra President and CEO Brian Harrison
Solyndra CFO W.G. Bill Stover
BACKGROUND: Solyndra was awarded the first stimulus DOE loan in the Spring of 2009 and has been widely promoted as a stimulus jobs “success story" ever since, with President Obama visiting the plant in May 2010. Commencing in February 2011, the House Energy and Commerce Committee has been investigating the DOE’s $535 million loan guarantee to Solyndra. Committee Democrats have continually refused to cooperate, instead protesting investigative efforts at every opportunity. The Committee was forced to issue a subpoena to the Obama OMB on July 14, 2011, for documents related to approving the Credit Subsidy Costs of all DOE loan guarantees. Every Democrat on the Oversight Subcommittee opposed issuing the subpoena. Despite missing the subpoena’s July 22, 2011, deadline, OMB has since produced, and continues to produce, hundreds of pages of documents relating to the Solyndra loan guarantee and the restructuring of that agreement just this year.
