Pat Dollard

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George Kaiser, a Tulsa billionaire, and a large Obama donor is a primary investor in Solyndra. Kaiser was discovered to have made repeated visits to the White House. He has denied using his influence to win approval for the loan.

The Hill:

Republicans blasted Obama administration officials Wednesday for green-lighting a $535 million loan guarantee to Solyndra, a now-bankrupt California solar company with close ties to the White House.

The GOP attack at House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing focused on emails they said showed the White House tried to rush a final decision on Solyndra’s financing so that Vice President Biden could announce approval of the loan guarantee at the September 2009 groundbreaking for the company’s new factory.

“The documents demonstrate that, when DOE was reviewing the Solyndra guarantee in 2009, it was well aware of the financial problems the deal posed,” Rep. Cliff Stearns, chairman of the panel’s Oversight and Investigations subcommittee, said Wednesday.

“What the documents show is that the rush to push out stimulus dollars may have impacted the depth and quality of DOE and OMB’s review.”

The documents left the White House scrambling to defend its clean energy agenda, in which President Obama has invested a huge amount of political capital.

Jonathan Silver, the executive director of the Energy Department’s Loan Programs Office, insisted at the hearing that Obama administration staff did not feel pressure to quickly finalize financing for the project.

White House press secretary Jay Carney also rejected allegations that the administration rushed the review of the loan guarantee, arguing that the emails pertain to a “scheduling matter.”

“What the emails, I believe, made clear is that there was urgency to make a decision about a scheduling matter,” Carney told reporters on Air Force One Wednesday.

“As you know, and you are familiar with it in a way that most Americans aren’t, it is a big proposition to move the president or to put on an event and that sort of thing. So people were simply looking for answers about whether or not we could move forward.”

Obama has argued investments in low-carbon energy sources like wind and solar would help build new industries that could create thousands of “green jobs” and help the U.S. “win the future” in a global competition against China and other foreign producers.

Republicans have been skeptical of these claims, and Solyndra’s downfall has given them a powerful point in their argument that the White House has gone off course by backing renewable energy subsidies to the detriment of traditional fossil fuel sources.

The fight is likely to continue through Obama’s 2012 election campaign, as green energy has been a major part of Obama’s domestic policy agenda, and the loan guarantee to Solyndra, which shut down its manufacturing facilities and laid off 1,100 workers in filing for bankruptcy, was also intended as economic stimulus.

Republicans argue that the Obama administration’s push to create “green jobs” blinded officials to a series of red flags that hinted at Solyndra’s financial troubles.

Stearns linked the Solyndra loan directly to the 2009 economic stimulus package.

“Only after the Obama administration took control and the stimulus passed was the Solyndra deal pushed through,” Stearns said.

Congressional Democrats worked with the administration Wednesday to shift blame to both Solyndra and the Bush administration, which began consideration of Solyndra’s loan guarantee application, but did not finalize it.

Silver noted in his testimony that the Bush administration identified Solyndra as a top contender for receiving a loan guarantee. The Obama administration ultimately approved the loan guarantee in 2009 “on the exact schedule that had been developed during the Bush administration,” Silver said.

Democrats also faulted Solyndra executives, who are to testify next week and will face tough questions from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, for misleading federal officials about their company’s financial standing.

Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) said top Solyndra executives painted a rosy picture of the company’s financial outlook during a meeting with lawmakers in July.

Republicans countered that the Bush administration raised at least some concerns about the loan guarantee, noting that an Energy Department committee said the application needed further review shortly before Obama took office.

Silver also noted that market forces along with competition from China put major strains on the solar industry in recent months, making “Solyndra’s business model very challenging.” The market changes took many analysts and the company by surprise, he said.

In an attempt to counter calls to slash funding for the Energy Department’s loan guarantee program, the administration is arguing that the Solyndra incident underscores the need for the United States to double down on investments in clean energy.

Despite Solyndra’s financial problems, the Energy Department has continued to approve loan guarantees for major solar projects. The department, for example, finalized an $852 million loan guarantee for a separate California solar project sponsored by NextEra Energy in August.

The Solyndra bankruptcy shows that the United States must greatly ratchet up its investments in clean energy in order to compete with China, Silver said.

“The question is whether we are willing to take on this challenge, or whether we will simply cede leadership in clean energy to other nations and watch as tens of thousands of jobs are created overseas,” Silver said. ““We were once the leaders in this field, and we can be again.”

Republicans launched an investigation into the Obama administration’s decision to grant the loan guarantee earlier this year after Solyndra encountered a number of financial setbacks. Solyndra said last year that it would close a plant, lay off employees and delay the expansion of its newest facility. It also canceled plans for a public stock offering.

Some Democrats blasted Republicans for politicizing the bankruptcy Wednesday, arguing the GOP was using the failure of a business to crush support for renewable energies.

“This is all part of an agenda here that deals with the solar industry and the wind industry,” Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) said.