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Report: Energy Secretary ‘Annihilated’ White House Econ Team‘s Objections to ’Green’ Energy Loans

A recent Washington Post (WaPo) exposé on the Obama administration’s Department of Energy (DOE) loan guarantee program tells a story not so much of a White House conspiring to throw money into poorly thought out projects, but of an administration that has no idea what it’s doing.

Based on a recent Congressional investigation into the DOE’s multiple flopped “green” energy deals, the WaPo article underscores several emails showing the White House knew about the financial risks involved in energy investments. Even more telling is the fact that these same emails show the White House thought Secretary of Energy Steven Chu was going a bit overboard with the program. So, they knew of the risks and thought Chu was overdoing it? Got it.

Jonathan Silver, the man running the loan program, claimed Secretary Chu “annihilated” objections from the White House’s economic team, declaring “total victory.”

Via Instapundit:

Other e-mail exchanges in the documents appear to show deep divisions between Chu and some senior Obama economic advisers over the program.

After the June 2011 meeting with Daley, Jonathan Silver, the director of the Energy Department’s loan office, celebrated “total victory” over administration opponents. He described in an e-mail to a colleague how Chu came as “close to an annihilation of the economic team’s position as you could possibly hope for.” Silver speculated that Daley had given the economic team “a fig leaf” and that the Energy Department’s victory was cause to “do some serious gloating.”

A draft of Energy Department talking points prepared for the presidential briefing highlights that the program had committed more than $34 billion and asserted that it had created or saved 68,000 jobs. Those talking points forecast little risk from the program, although Solyndra was already showing signs of distress: The department months earlier had negotiated a loan restructuring amid threats that the firm would have to liquidate for lack of operating cash.

“DOE expects that all loans will be repaid,” one presentation slide said. “When loans are repaid, the benefits — including the creation of tens of thousands of jobs — will have been obtained at little cost to taxpayers.”

However, as Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey points out, this wasn’t the White House’s chief concern. They were more worried about “unjust enrichment.”

Come again?

Officials at the Treasury Department and the White House Office of Management and Budget often argued that government subsidies to clean-energy companies gave them too great of a return on investment, or an “unjust enrichment,” Chu wrote.

“Many times, they felt that a ‘better deal’’ could have been brokered by DOE and asked us to renegotiate,” he said.

Huh, so they were mostly worried “green” energy execs would privately make a boatload of cash from taxpayer-funded investments? Well, um, we actually agree with the White house on this one. Now if they only had this sort of concern for, you know, the success of the projects they poured taxpayer money into.

“The question that arises from these e-mails: did this presidential briefing take place? What was Obama told about Solyndra and the other ventures that took taxpayer money down the drain shortly afterward?” Morrissey asks.

“While these e-mails don’t exactly represent a smoking gun, they do show the banana-peel cluelessness of both the White House and the DoE in managing this loan program,” he adds.

Follow Becket Adams (@BecketAdams) on Twitter

Comments (46)

  • Bohump
    Posted on August 10, 2012 at 3:02pm

    Send them more money you dummy,…. all they want …you can print all you need, its only money, right ?

    Report Post »  
  • ObserverOnTheHill
    Posted on August 10, 2012 at 7:16am

    A great book on how the communists have taken over our institutions – churches, schools, businesses, government, Military and now our court system is

    – The Naked Truth: The Naked Communist – Revisited
    by James C. Bowers

    http://www.amazon.com/The-Naked-Truth-Communist-Revisited/dp/093616316X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1339153878&sr=8-1

    He discusses how W. Cleon Skousen ( author of the 5000 Year Leap ) was an FBI agent for 16 years and was concerned about the implementation of what he felt were the top 45 stated goals of the communists at that time. You will be shocked how successfully their plans have been completed. A MUST READ book for any freedom loving American. Please pass on to others when done reading – SPREAD THE WORD

    Also – A MUST SEE – We were warned – watch the youtube video of Yuri Bezmenov, from the 80′s with G. Edward Griffin ( Jekyll Island author ). A Soviet KGB defector, he tells how it was his job to infiltrate these institutions and place communist supporters in positions of leadership and power. He was successful in doing so. Mind boggling stuff.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3qkf3bajd4

    Report Post »  
  • QuincySmith
    Posted on August 9, 2012 at 10:56pm

    “Based on a recent Congressional investigation into the DOE’s multiple flopped “green” energy deals, the WaPo article underscores several emails showing the White House knew about the financial risks involved in energy investments.” Come on theblaze! Don‘t buy into oblama ’investments’. Call them what they are: scams, waste, deception, fraud; but please not ‘investments’.

    Report Post » QuincySmith  
    • G-WHIZ
      Posted on August 10, 2012 at 9:32am

      TheOBO-WH IS crashing our system and removing all legal weppons so the NEW WORLD ORDER can roll-over the U.S.A. easilly. History tells us about several “presidients” legally-elected, whom took-over their countries with [THE BIG LIE] of “we only want to protect you!” .

      Report Post »  
  • psadie
    Posted on August 9, 2012 at 5:51pm

    This is sickening! An idiot surrounded by idiots with no clue as to what they are doing. No wonder Steve Jobs, in his auto biography, came away from a meeting with Obama DISGUSTED. OMG they are ruining the nation and they don’t even get it!!!

    Report Post »  
    • chips1
      Posted on August 9, 2012 at 8:28pm

      They know exactly what they are doing. Overthrowing the U.S. If your really quiet, you can hear Boehner crying again.

      Report Post »  
    • dmerwin
      Posted on August 9, 2012 at 8:56pm

      Annihilated with what? Liberal, feel good, groovy envirospeak?

      Report Post » dmerwin  
  • Chromo200
    Posted on August 9, 2012 at 5:27pm

    And Obama is such a great business man that he saved the auto industry. And these memos prove it of his superiority. When is this idiocy going to be over.

    Report Post »  
  • NOBALONEY
    Posted on August 9, 2012 at 4:11pm

    Mulitiple dictators in administration. Cass Sunstein left because he couldn’t grow a mustache.

    Report Post » NOBALONEY  
  • exblackbird
    Posted on August 9, 2012 at 4:05pm

    has anyone checked out chu’s background and how it influenced his selection as energy secy??

    known for his research at Bell Labs in cooling and trapping of atoms with laser light………….professor of physics and molecular and cellular biology………..director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where his research was concerned primarily with the study of biological systems at the single molecule level……………

    duhhhhhhhhhh…………and we wonder how programs like solyndra got picked and then went down the tubes. we got a deep thinker scientist as energy secy…………NOT A BUSINESS PERSON. anyone with half a wit about business would have flushed these “pie-in-the-sky” ventures and instead focused on improving the development of our nations energy resources.

    this stuff is NOT chu’s private laboratory………..its the taxpayer’s $$$ and that is what mr chu failed to remember.

    Report Post »  
  • Detroit paperboy
    Posted on August 9, 2012 at 3:46pm

    Steven Chu , like all those morons couldn’t run a donut shop successfully ……..it’s never their own money they risk……NEVER, and where is our congress on this massive theft of taxpayer money…..rinos to be tossed out. Toooo

    Report Post »  
    • AvengerK
      Posted on August 9, 2012 at 4:14pm

      Believe or not..when the Solyndra story first broke..Chu actually said that Solyndra was a success.

      “the project that we supported succeeded. The facility was producing the product it said it would produce, and consumers were buying the product.”

      Steven Chu’s background is as a physicist at Berkeley (he has a noble prize you know? As Obama likes to repeat). Chu regarded Solyndra as a kind of experiment, to prove that the process was viable (that is: physically possible). Chu is a product of the leftist academic bubble in our universities today, completely removed from reality and marinating in a leftist cauldron of global warming, over population..ad nauseum.

      The entire question of how much it all was going to cost was irrelevant to Chu or as this article demonstrates…completely beyond his level of competence.

      You’ll find no better argument for keeping academics out of policy positions. Academics have a tendency to fall in love with their analytical positions and find it hard to acknowldege the lessons of reality. Quite simply..Obama could not have found a worse man for the job. But then again…you can’t find a worse man for the job than Barack Obama either.

      Report Post »  
    • Wango
      Posted on August 9, 2012 at 4:36pm

      AVENGECAKE . . . That’s some mighty impressive gelatinous reconstitution there. Hey, two words – Spencer Abraham. (No, he’s not related to Lincoln.)

      Report Post » Wango  
    • AvengerK
      Posted on August 9, 2012 at 6:27pm

      LOL…no really WANGO/ENCINOM/MONICNE/SLEAZY HIPPO/HORSEDANCER that’s your defense of Stephen Chu? Seriously sport? Not captain of the debate team were you tiger?

      Let me get this straight….you‘ve got proof infront of your benighted lefty mind that Chu is a rank incompetent and has no idea what he’s doing but you play the “Bush did it” game instead? No..seriously…$ 6 trillion in new debt and you’re playing “what about him?”?

      I dont’ care about Spencer Abraham you cretinous pustule…I care about what Chu is doing RIGHT NOW!!!! No wonder you need so many names for yourself you idiot. Your different names keep letting you down so you have to keep coming up with new identities. Creep.

      Report Post »  
    • QuincySmith
      Posted on August 9, 2012 at 11:11pm

      Avengerk;

      Sorry to challenge your post, but amid his many accomplishments, you failed to note if he could balance a checkbook.

      Report Post » QuincySmith  
    • Lt_Scrounge
      Posted on August 9, 2012 at 11:25pm

      Wango, The Bush administration denied Solyndra’s loan application because their analysts said that the $535 million wouldn’t be enough to keep the company afloat past Sept 2011. That was the beginning of January 2009, three weeks later Chu and Obamao were announcing that they were making a wonderful “investment” of taxpayers’ money into Solyndra. How did Solyndra go from not economically viable to a great investment in under a month? Nothing had changed except the inauguration of an ideologue with no business experience. His entire cabinet is made up of theoreticians and academics. Steven Chu even went so far as to advocate painting all of the roofs and roads in the US WHITE to combat “man made global warming”, despite the fact that the actual data shows that the planet is actually COOLER than it was 1000 years ago. Does that sound like someone who should be in charge of billions of dollars and have the ability to destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs in the oil, coal and natural gas industries?

      Report Post »  
    • Zipit
      Posted on August 10, 2012 at 10:09am

      Wango! With every post, you become more irrelevant! And, if this is the administration’s pathetic attempt to distance itself form screw ups like Solyndra, all that is going to show, once again, is the lefts inability to take responsibility for anything! Chu is the administration! Obama is responsible for Chu!

      Report Post »  
  • huey6367
    Posted on August 9, 2012 at 3:36pm

    I wonder if Obama’s golf game has improved since he has been in office?

    Report Post »  
  • Detroit paperboy
    Posted on August 9, 2012 at 3:34pm

    Where in Gods name is the freakin congress ??? I thought the congress was supposed to control the purse strings……Boehner and McConnell are establishment RINOS..”…AND THEY NEED TO BE THROWN OUT TOOOOO…..

    Report Post »  
    • J. Patrick Henry
      Posted on August 9, 2012 at 4:51pm

      You mean with a “BUDGET”!!!!!??????

      That thing that USED to get done once a year before Harry Reid stopped it in its tracks?

      Report Post »  
  • seeker9
    Posted on August 9, 2012 at 3:28pm

    Well, if the idea was to create the conditions where taxes have to be raised, thus taking from the wealthy for redistribution, then mission accomplished.

    Report Post » seeker9  
  • Snowleopard {gallery of cat folks}
    Posted on August 9, 2012 at 3:20pm

    So we have even more proof of the administrations actions; its past time to throw them out of office and drag them into the criminal courts – and when found guilty, send them to jail for life.

    Report Post » Snowleopard {gallery of cat folks}  
    • huey6367
      Posted on August 9, 2012 at 3:35pm

      No jail – just a rope and the nearest tree. Then beat them with a piece of bamboo like a pinata.

      Report Post »  
  • zoro51
    Posted on August 9, 2012 at 3:16pm

    with more n more so called GREEN JOBS got the cash n RAN this loser wants more to give out??? FIRE THIS INEPT LOSER NOW obamas green jobs are a FARCE n a RAPEMENT OF US DOLLARS tossed to his SOCIALIST CRONIES THATS ALL

    Report Post » zoro51  
  • Hiswill
    Posted on August 9, 2012 at 3:14pm

    It’s not their money. They might as well just flush it down the toilet for all the good it’s done.
    Chu should be fired, arrested,sent to court and tossed in the klink.
    Get Obama out of there before he causes anymore damage to this country.

    Report Post » Hiswill  
    • The_Jerk
      Posted on August 9, 2012 at 3:20pm

      “Get Obama out of there before he causes anymore damage to this country.”

      This is the change that his handlers were seeking.

      Report Post »  
  • wboehmer
    Posted on August 9, 2012 at 3:12pm

    Secretary of Energy Steven Chu is an example of the WORST of the Øbama Administration. For Chu, ideology always trumps consensus; the end always justifies the means. Øbama himself is like this, but he is deceitful enough to make it appear otherwise.

    WORST ADMINISTRATION EVER!

    Report Post »  
  • lexington_green
    Posted on August 9, 2012 at 3:01pm

    i’m sure brian ross will be working hard to see if the tea party had anything to do with all the billions lost by these incompetents.

    Report Post » lexington_green  
  • Anonymous T. Irrelevant
    Posted on August 9, 2012 at 2:53pm

    “administration that has no idea what it’s doing.”
    ——————————————
    This pretty much sums it all up.

    Report Post » Anonymous T. Irrelevant  
    • Diane TX
      Posted on August 9, 2012 at 3:11pm

      “administration that has no idea what it’s doing.”
      ——————————————
      This pretty much sums it all up.
      =================================================
      I agree and I’d include – that it has no idea what it’s doing about ANYTHING.

      Report Post »  
    • Lloyd Drako
      Posted on August 9, 2012 at 3:16pm

      Whether right or wrong, I’m sure most of them have a very clear idea. They are quite certain that some sort of “green” is the future, and they probably see themselves as “investing” in it. There will be a huge amount of waste and perhapsy some corruption, and many if not most “investments” will not pan out, but in the long run it, they believe, it will be worth it. Something like the government’s subsidies for early railroads, or Arpanet. This is classic mid-20th-century “big dreams” liberalism, quite unsuited to our more bracing times.

      Report Post » Lloyd Drako  
    • randy
      Posted on August 9, 2012 at 3:17pm

      Oh believe me, they know exactly what they’re doing….. Don’t kid yourself.

      Report Post » randy  
  • AvengerK
    Posted on August 9, 2012 at 2:51pm

    LOL….more incompetence from Obama’s Keystone Kops adminstration.
    Appointing an outright idiot like Stephen Chu as energy secretary was the first sign of impending incompentence.

    Report Post »  
  • Skeeterhawk
    Posted on August 9, 2012 at 2:41pm

    If we had any politicians with a spine they would simply vote no to funding the “administrative” branch of government. Simple as that. Try to enforce your 250,000 regulations with no monies to do so. It would end that day. Then go to work with a meat axe and repeal most of this asinine crap.

    Report Post » Skeeterhawk  
  • nattybrooks
    Posted on August 9, 2012 at 2:40pm

    shocker? democrats are only good at get rich investments when their votes on legislation will affect investment practices. i’ve yet to hear of a democrat that can balance a checkbook let alone a budget.

    Report Post » nattybrooks  
  • The_Jerk
    Posted on August 9, 2012 at 2:38pm

    Jonathan Silver, in charge of a tax payer loan program, Jewish… go figure. Before anyone spouts off about semitism, you had better do your homework and see just how common this is… for an ethnic group comprising 1.3% of the population.

    Report Post »  
    • tzion
      Posted on August 9, 2012 at 4:30pm

      @Jerk
      “How common this is”? Excuse me but it is far more common to see a non-Jewish socialist or environmental extremist than the other way around. The only reason you see lots of Jews is because you expect to. Then every time you find one you say “See I was right”. You only see what you want to be true. Your entire comment is based on your subjective (and highly biased) viewpoint. You, Jerk, aren’t antisemitic in the sense that you hate Jews, your antisemitic in the sense that you are highly prejudiced against Jews.

      Report Post »  
    • The_Jerk
      Posted on August 9, 2012 at 5:34pm

      TZion, good day.

      Now, please explain to us how OMB Directors Peter Orszag, Jewish, was replaced by Jacob Lew, Jewish, who was then replaced by Jeffrey Zeints, Jewish. That is a near impossible occurrence without active, purposeful, nepotistic manipulation.

      There’s more, but start there.

      Report Post »  
    • tzion
      Posted on August 10, 2012 at 12:23am

      @Jerk
      You see you just proved my point. For you Jews are guilty until proven innocent. You haven’t even offered proof but merely pointed out a series of occurrences taken out of context. You want to argue that a conspiracy is at play then provide hard evidence.

      To answer your baseless assertions, Jews have been an overrepresented minority in many areas for quite a long while. Just look at Nobel laureates, doctors, lawyers, etc. Jews have historically trended to do better on average than other groups. Asians are very much the same. Why then don’t you explain to me why the scenario you mentioned is surprising? Sure it’s unlikely, but it’s far more likely than you give it credit for. It’s not as though they pick names out of a hat. Maybe next you‘ll tell me there’s a black conspiracy to take over basketball. After all, there are far too many black basketball players for it not to be by design, right?

      Report Post »  
  • progressiveslayer
    Posted on August 9, 2012 at 2:34pm

    All of these unconstitutional agencies and this is just one of many in conjunction with the wrecking ball of capitalism BHO AKA BS or whatever name he’s used to game the system is systematically destroying our economy,by design.

    Have a look at the real debt. http://www.moneynews.com/StreetTalk/Kotlikoff-US-debt-trillion/2011/09/01/id/409412

    Report Post » progressiveslayer  
  • historyguy48
    Posted on August 9, 2012 at 2:29pm

    This group of criminals need to be arrested, given a fair trial, and then be hung right there on the Mall in Washington and their bodies should be left to rot. Kind of like what Mao loved to do.

    Report Post » historyguy48  
    • Skeeterhawk
      Posted on August 9, 2012 at 2:38pm

      I‘m tellin’ ya that one day the common man is going to have enough of this kind of thievery and its going to get ugly. May be even violent. Our dollar continues to decline in value, our homes decline in value and out retirement, if you are lucky enough to have one, continue to shrink. Food and fuel continue to spiral up in cost. I wish people would get angry enough to get some answers but alas it seems the Union may be lost.

      Report Post » Skeeterhawk  

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