Jim Jordan Suggests Elections Drive Solyndra Investigation

WASHINGTON -- After months of investigations into Solyndra and other Department of Energy loans failed to produce a smoking gun, one Republican lawmaker let slip why House Republicans have kept up the charge.

In an interview following yet another hearing in which Energy Secretary Steven Chu testified about the Department's loan guarantee program, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) appeared to admit that Republicans' ongoing probes of the program -- from which the bankrupt California-based solar company Solyndra and others benefited -- are largely a play to win votes in November.

"Our staff will continue to dig into it and see," Jordan told Environment & Energy Daily. "But what I hope happens is we stop doing these kind of things ... this whole cronyism approach to the marketplace.

"Ultimately, we'll stop it on Election Day, hopefully. And bringing attention to these things helps the voters and citizens of the country make the kind of decision that I hope helps them as they evaluate who they are going to vote for in November."

Jordan's press secretary, Meghan Snyder, called HuffPost on Thursday to discuss the context for Jordan's statement.

Solyndra Subpoena Rejected By Obama Administration

WASHINGTON -- The White House Counsel's Office has formally rejected a congressional subpoena of documents relating to the $535 million loan guarantee that the administration shepherded for Solyndra, the now-defunct solar energy company.

In a letter to the chairs of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation, Kathryn H. Ruemmler, counsel to the president, calls the request for documents made by House Republicans a "vast fishing expedition" and a "significant intrusion on Executive Branch interests."

"As written, [the subpoena] encompasses all communications within the White House from the beginning of this Administration to the present that refer or relate to Solyndra, and the subpoena purports to demand a complete response in less than a week," Ruemmler writes. "Thus, any document that references Solyndra, even in passing, is arguably responsive to the Committee’s request, and you reaffirmed this week that you intend for the request to be that broad. There is no basis for such a broad request beyond a “vast fishing expedition," as Congressman Dingell noted yesterday. Moreover, responding to such an expansive request would require the devotion of substantial resources to gather and review many documents that are of no legitimate oversight is itself an unreasonable burden on the President's ability to meet his constitutional duties."

Solyndra and Keystone: Not All Environmental Scandals Are Created Equal

This unseasonably warm and unexpectedly lively autumn, the Obama administration finds itself embroiled in two environmental scandals. One, involving run-of-the-mill cronyism and bureaucratic ineptitude, we’ve been hearing about endlessly. The other, in which cronyism on a grand scale is imperiling the planet, is being swept under the rug.

First, there’s Solyndra. To the delight of Tea Partiers and climate change deniers everywhere, the Energy Department made some serious missteps when it guaranteed a $535 million loan to the shaky start-up solar company whose fortunes depended on the success of a quirky technology. An Energy official who avidly pushed the project had a blatant conflict of interest: his wife’s law firm represented the company. So what might have been written off as a bad bet also showed bad faith.

Even so, the Solyndra scandal is overblown. Companies routinely fail in every industry; the whole point of industrial policy is to provide backing for ventures that might produce big breakthroughs but can’t attract sufficient private investment precisely because they are too risky. Of all the green investment areas, solar is the most risky, since solar energy is nowhere close to being cost-competitive with conventional energy. But the real lesson of Solyndra, lost in the right-wing hysterics, is that in the area of renewables, the government should be giving big subsidies to wind, not solar. And it should be more aggressive and sophisticated in its approach to developing clean energy technologies and markets.