As the Congressional hearing on the failed solar energy manufacturer Solyndra gets under way, it's already clear that the Obama administration is prepared to fall back on a tried and tested strategy: blaming Bush.
In prepared testimony released ahead of the hearing before the House Energy and Commerce committee, the director of the Department of Energy's loans office, Jonathan Silver, emphasizes that the program that eventually granted a $535 million loan guarantee to the troubled firm was created during the Bush administration.
Not only that, Silver says, "Solyndra submitted its initial application in 2006, and much of the extensive due diligence on the transaction was conducted between 2006 and the end of 2008."
He says that "by the time the Obama administration took office in late January 2009, the loan programs' staff had already established a goal of, and timeline for, issuing the company a conditional loan guarantee commitment in March 2009." Ultimately, the Obama administration issued the loan guarantee that March, which Silver argues, was "on the exact timeline that had been developed by the Bush administration..."
But Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., chairman of the oversight subcommittee that is conducting the Solyndra investigation, said that there's a problem with that version of events. "In reality, on January 9, 2009 -- at the end of the Bush administration -- the DOE Credit Committee voted against offering a conditional commitment to Solyndra, saying that the deal was premature and questioning its underlying financial support," Stearns said in his opening statement. "Only after Obama took control, and the stimulus passed, was the Solyndra deal pushed through."
