Stephen Chu Lies Like A Rug On Solyndra Deal
By Dell Hill
Hat Tip - Hot Air
One of the key roles of any Cabinet Secretary is that of a firewall for the President — a person to take the blame when things go wrong. As the Solyndra scandal deepens, Energy Secretary Stephen Chu went to Congress this morning to fulfill that role … in part, anyway.
Chu released his opening statement to the press this morning, in which he takes responsibility but ducks any remorse or blame for the Solyndra debacle:
“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 has written in testimony prepared for his first appearance before Congress to answer questions about the failed loan.
“I want to be clear: over the course of Solyndra’s loan guarantee, I did not make any decision based on political considerations,” says Chu’s prepared testimony, which was made public by his aides late Wednesday. “My decision to guarantee a loan to Solyndra was based on the analysis of experienced professionals and on the strength of the information they had available to them at the time.”
Well, that’s false on its face. DoE auditors raised red flags on the Solyndra loan well before its approval, but got overruled by the political appointees, including Chu. Not only did Chu approve the loan, the DoE also got Solyndra a sweetheart deal on the rate. Even Solyndra’s investors thought that it had turned into a risky bet, and the DoE was well aware of it at the time.” (Emphasis added)
To make matters even worse, in what appears to be an obvious effort to bail out Solyndra just days after the initial loan guarantee was issued, the Obama administration was fully prepared to dump several million MORE of your dollars into this toilet we call Solyndra. That action, of course, was an effort to save face over the incredible failure at the top.
Had any high ranking government official with a modicum of common sense visited the Solyndra facility, they would have instantly noticed the lavishly decorated plant and offices - suggesting strongly that tax payer guaranteed loans had been squandered on luxury surroundings rather than the production of solar energy products.
Do we know of any such government official?
Well, no, we don’t.
But President Barack Obama was there.
Vice President Joe Biden has been fully engaged with the Solyndra debacle from the beginning, as we read in this report from the Wall Street Journal, September 4, 2009 edition.
“The Obama administration on Friday used the California site of a planned solar-panel factory to complete the first-ever loan guarantee for a renewable-energy project, a $535 million deal that will allow Solyndra Inc. to create hundreds of jobs.
The announcement, outlined by Vice President Joe Biden and Energy Secretary Steven Chu in a region battered by an auto-factory shutdown, comes as Obama administration officials are hoping to show that investments in clean energy projects can help reverse almost two years of job losses.
In March, Solyndra became the first company awarded a loan guarantee under a 2005 program intended to spur renewable energy projects. But the company for months had been unable to lock in the loan because of problems raising the necessary private funds required by the Energy Department to close the deal.
Fortunately for Solyndra, its venture backers stepped up, investing $198 million in equity in a round led by shareholder Argonaut Private Equity, an investment vehicle for Oklahoma billionaire George Kaiser. Other investors in the company include CMEA Ventures, Madrone Capital Partners, which manages capital of the Rob Walton family, Rockport Capital and Virgin Green Fund, which was launched with backing of the Virgin Group.
In remarks beamed via satellite to a groundbreaking ceremony in Fremont, Calif., Biden said: “These are the jobs of the future, these are the green jobs, these are the jobs that won’t be exported.”
Biden was right about one thing - these jobs won’t be exported - because “these jobs” no longer exist. They went the same route as your tax dollars, which are now being used to pay off the massive debts guaranteed by Chu and Obama, along with the strong backing of Joe Biden.
Solyndra is bankrupt and YOU’RE going to pay the bills. With deals like Solyndra, is it any wonder the federal deficit has skyrocketed to $15 trillion dollars?
One more example of the “Hope and Change” you voted for in 2008?
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