FACT CHECKER Calls-out Obama Over "Solyndra Shuffle" Trying to Blame Bush for His $535M Taxpayer Give Away!

The 23 March 2012 Washington Post FACT CHECKER Called-out Obama Over His "Solyndra Shuffle" Trying to Deflect his Blame for the $535 MILLION Taxpayer Give Away to a Failed Company Associated with His Major Bundler!

What a difference a year makes! I have posted Glenn Kessler’s entire 23 March Fact Checker below if you want to see what he actually said but here’s my interpretation of it.

Back in 2010 when Obama was riding high on his Green initiatives, he praised the company when he visited Solyndra, the solar panel manufacturer associated with George Kaiser. Remember George, he’s that Oklahoma billionaire who served as an Obama "bundler" raising TONS of money during the 2008 presidential campaign. George’s company, Argonaut Ventures, was the single largest shareholder of Solyndra with 39% of the company so when Obama’s Energy Dept illegally decided to put investors ahead of Taxpayers in recovering money in the Solyndra bankruptcy, George was the BIG beneficiary.

So here is how Obama touted his investing $535 MILLION of your Taxpayer money back in 2010:

“We can see the positive impacts right here at Solyndra. Less than a year ago, we were standing on what was an empty lot. But through the Recovery Act, this company received a loan to expand its operations. This new factory is the result of those loans… Before the Recovery Act, we could build just 5 percent of the world’s solar panels. In the next few years, we’re going to double our share to more than 10 percent.”
— Obama, remarks at Solyndra Inc., Fremont, Calif., May 26, 2010

…and when Obama’s Taxpayer “investment” went south, here is the “Obama Shuffle” again trying to play the “Blame Bush” game:

“Obviously, we wish Solyndra hadn’t gone bankrupt. Part of the reason they did was because the Chinese were subsidizing their solar industry and flooding the market in ways that Solyndra couldn’t compete. But understand: This was not our program, per se. Congress — Democrats and Republicans — put together a loan guarantee program because they understood historically that when you get new industries, it’s easy to raise money for startups, but if you want to take them to scale, oftentimes there’s a lot of risk involved, and what the loan guarantee program was designed to do was to help startup companies get to scale.” — President Obama, interview with American Public Media’s “Marketplace,” March 21, 2012

Aiding and abetting Obama’s Solyndra fiasco was Steven J. Spinner, another elite member of Obama’s “$500K+ Bundler Bunch” who Obama hired to "oversee" the administration's energy loan program. Talk about hiring the wolf to watch the chicken house! Spinner pushed and prodded career Department of Energy officials to approve the Solyndra loans even though his wife's law firm was representing Solyndra! Appears Spinner had forgotten he had signed an ethics agreement pledging he would "not participate in any discussion regarding any application involving his wife's law firm (Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati)."

What Obama once touted as his administration’s BIG achievement has now somehow become a bipartisan effort that preceded Obama — what a difference a year makes. Which is it?

Here are the Facts: The Energy Policy Act of 2005, was signed into law by Bush and Section 1703 of Title XVII included loan guarantee funding to promote innovative clean energy technologies. Solyndra had applied for a loan under 1703, but no loans were made by the time Bush left office.

In 2009, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, better known as Obama’s stimulus, Obama added a new section — 1705 — which offered a more attractive loan package because it did not include credit subsidy fees. Solyndra received its $535 MILLIOM loan under Obama’s Section 1705 — not the original Bush Section 1703 program.

A White House 14 Oct 2009 E-Mail obtained by congressional investigators shows Obama officials viewed Solyndra as a key element in “supporting the president’s manufacturing strategy” adding “The Administration’s combination of loans, grants, tax credits and mandates will help the United States regain its position as the world leader in manufacturing clean energy equipment.”

The Obama 2010 quote above clearly demonstrates, the president chose to emphasize the administration’s role in crafting the Solyndra loan when he spoke about Solyndra, only to “do an about face” once Solyndra failed.

Obama officials can’t cite a single example of the administration mentioning Bush until after Solyndra went belly-up. A 4 Sep 2009, news release even quoted VP Biden as saying: “This announcement today is part of the unprecedented investment this Administration is making in renewable energy and exactly what the Recovery Act is all about.” So in Biden’s own words, the stimulus law was promoted — not any Bush-era law. Biden touted the administration’s pivotal role when it looked like Solyndra was going gangbusters and then began blaming Bush when things started going badly.

The Fact Check’s Pinocchio Test awarded Two Pinocchios noting The Obama administration is straining too hard to reverse history by trying to link the Solyndra failure to the original Bush law setting up the loan guarantee program when Solyndra received its loan through Obama’s program expansion for which he was all to quick to take credit for when things looked fine. The Fact checker’s bottom line: ‘It’s hard to believe that any reasonable person could interpret Obama’s remarks this week as anything but a distinct effort to put the blame for Solyndra in some one else’s pocket. The president should accept responsibility, not shirk it.’