DID BARACK Obama’s White House team favour a prominent supporter of the president by putting up a $535 million state loan for his alternative energy company? We speak of solar power company Solyndra, which promised to create 4,000 jobs and subsequently instead filed for bankruptcy and laid off 1,000. That, at least, is the charge, as yet unproven, but which Republicans are gnawing like a dog with a bone for potential presidential campaign material. Ethics “dirt” on Obama has been in very short supply.
Solyndra was in 2009 the first company awarded a loan guarantee through Obama’s nearly $800 billion recovery plan and was seen as a flagship of the administration’s strategy of supporting new clean energy industries with $16 billion in loan guarantees. Republicans claim that the support continued even after the authorities knew the company was in difficulties. That included the scheduling of a May 2010 Obama visit during which he praised it as a model for state investment although an official had warned in advance that it could prove “embarrassing in the not too distant future”.
Obama defended the government’s investment on Monday, saying that “hindsight is 20/20” and the fact that the programme involved risk was generally well known – the charge of poor judgment may stick, of political patronage, hardly. Particularly so, as it is clear that Solyndra was shortlisted as a good candidate for aid by the Bush administration although it did not provide any.
This week the battle raged on in Congress where the House energy and commerce committee voted to subpoena Obama’s chief of staff and other aides for all their internal communications concerning the company. The committee has already received some 80,000 pages of material, including memos from the White House, office of management and budget, and the energy department, and before the vote the White House volunteered another 1,200 pages, proof Democrats say of a willingness to co-operate and of the lack of necessity for compulsion and subpoenas. So far, no smoking guns...
Democrats see the Republican demands as essentially partisan campaigning to raise the profile of the issue, and have bridled at the suggestion the subpoenas may require Obama even to submit his Blackberry messages for scrutiny. But although the issue still remains largely below the horizon of popular concerns, some still believe it has the potential to hurt the president – one Tea Party group this week announced a $2.4 million 2012 campaign ad about the failed solar company.