Republicans Will Make Solyndra Mess A Campaign Issue

by Don Azarias
May 16, 2012
“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the US Government cannot pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our government’s reckless fiscal policies. Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that, ‘the buck stops here.’ Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.”
Sound familiar? Of course, that was Sen. Barack Obama’s speech on the Senate floor on March 20, 2006 when he was still an unknown junior U.S. Senator from the State of Illinois. And, apparently, with his eyes already set on the White House, Obama knows that, making that kind of statement, will make voters take notice of him and enhance his lackluster performance in Congress and improve his chances of moving to the Oval Office.
As part of the 2012 presidential campaign, it’s one of the political issues that the Republicans are likely to resurrect in order to remind the American voters of many of President Barack Obama’s self-serving rhetoric before and during the 2008 presidential campaign. Another thing that will be scrutinized is his involvement in the Solyndra, Inc.’s $535 million government loan fiasco. The California company is a solar panel manufacturer that sought bankruptcy protection after receiving the government loan despite warnings from government and private auditors of the company’s precarious financial position. An audit report by PricewaterhouseCoopers concluded that Solyndra had suffered recurring losses from operations and negative cash flows, raising substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern. Obama ignored all those warnings and ordered the Department of Energy (DOE) to provide the government loan as a payback to one of his major fundraisers, Oklahoma billionaire George Kaiser, an investor in Solyndra, Inc.
The public may want to know that Obama was also involved in providing government loans to Amonix Co. that laid off two thirds of its work force, A123 Systems that laid off a significant number of employees and Ener1 Co. that just recently filed for bankruptcy. It’s hard to believe that Obama, through his green-tech program, directed the DOE to provide loans to those companies without thoroughly examining their books. Of course, Obama never intended to do that, no matter what. His primary goal was to provide government loans to those companies as a way of paying back some of his principal fundraisers who are also those companies’ investors. For the readers’ information, the Obama administration gave those companies $5.9 million, $118.5 million and $249 million, respectively. Including Solyndra’s $535 million, that’s almost a billion dollars courtesy of the hardworking American taxpayers.
Included in the Republicans’ campaign strategy is their plan to use the Solyndra loan debacle as code word for Obama’s handling of the economy. They will try to exploit Obama’s ties to those unsuccessful companies that received government loans as a campaign issue. They’ll make a case against Obama’s claim during the 2008 presidential election campaign that he was a Washington, D.C. outsider and will change the inner-workings in the nation’s capital if he is elected president. Yet he failed to live up to that promise..
The Republicans have sought to highlight the connection between Obama’s fundraisers and the above-mentioned companies. They’ll argue that the president used his influence to benefit campaign supporters and, thus, was no different from those typical Washington political insiders that he promised not to become.
For the record, Steve Spinner, an Energy Department official, has raised at least $500,000 for Obama’s campaign while Steve Westly, a venture capitalist who was an unpaid adviser to the Energy Department, has raised between $200,000 and $500,000. Emails released by congressional investigators show Spinner was actively involved in the Solyndra loan, despite pledging to step aside because his wife’s law firm represented the company. Westly tried to warn Obama against the May 2010 trip to Solyndra’s Fremont, California headquarters to promote the firm but the president made the trip anyway.
Obama and Energy Secretary Steven Chu have said the loan program was intended to spark investment in renewable energy programs that otherwise would not qualify for a private loan and that the Obama administration officials knew from the start that investment in some of those companies would fail. Then why, in the world, would they provide those companies with government loans if they are doomed to fail when the United States already has unsustainable amount of debts and deficits in its books?
According to a Treasury Department report, the U.S government could lose nearly $3 billion on those green energy loans. The White House asked a former official to conduct the review in response to investigations by congressional Republicans into the Solyndra. What’s this, a hypocritical act of contrition?
During the 2012 presidential campaign, the Republican message will aim to undermine Obama’s case on rebuilding the economy as well as undercutting his perceived strengths among voters on character issues such as honesty and integrity.
Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster had this to say: “All of the sudden the companies that end up getting the grants are those who happen to be well politically connected.” I think Ayres is right on target. Obama has raised campaign money, not only from Solyndra investors in exchange for those large federal loans, but also from investors of Amonix, A123 Systems, Ener1 Company and other companies that were beneficiaries of the U.S. government’s largesse courtesy of the Obama administration.
And with Obama supporters benefiting from billions in taxpayer money while laid-off workers are losing their jobs and homes only proves, once and for all, that Obama has become a typical Washington insider. That’s a change we can believe in.