Enviro-grants and loans blow billions on foreign and domestic scams

◼ WASHINGTON TIMES EDITORIAL: Obama stimulates Jakarta

President Obama now claims there’s only $2 billion he can cut out of this year’s $3.6 trillion in federal outlays. He’s not looking very hard. The administration’s trillion-dollar “stimulus” spending spree spread millions in U.S. taxpayer dollars around places like the president’s boyhood home, Indonesia. Money that stayed within the country often wound up in the hands of debt-riddled, fly-by-night firms. This week, the White House continued to stonewall attempts to get to the bottom of where our money has been going.

On Friday, the House Energy and Commerce Committee delivered a subpoena to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) ordering the disclosure of documents related to the $535 million loan guarantee the Department of Energy gave to Solyndra Inc. This firm has been dear to Democratic luminaries, from Energy Secretary Stephen Chu to the president himself. “The true engine of economic growth will always be companies like Solyndra,” Mr. Obama said during a May 2010 visit.

The loan was meant to prop up a plant that would produce solar panels, ensuring the country would become more “green.” Instead, Securities and Exchange Commission filings show Solyndra’s books are nothing but red. The outfit lost $518,694,000 between 2007 and 2010 despite the massive infusion of public cash and private venture capital. OMB refused to disclose any documents that would shed light on why the government approved loans to this particular company.

The firm’s private investors include major donors to the Democratic Party, as do other recipients of the $11 billion Department of Energy slush fund used to dole out cash to so-called “clean technologies.” Absent these massive subsidies, the solar power industry would be about as large as the sundial manufacturing industry. Nonetheless, the Obama administration is desperate to paint intermittent energy sources as “the future.” It has no qualms about pouring billions in other people’s money into any product bearing the “green” label, even if that means handing over sacks of cash to foreigners. Read the rest.