White House political pressure responsible for Solyndra loan

From Fox News:

A congressional report concluded Friday that "political pressure" by a White House eager to tout stimulus spending was largely to blame for fast-tracking the ill-fated $535 million Solyndra loan guarantee -- findings compounded by the release of an email that showed the former CEO once referred to the aid as "The Bank of Washington."  . . ."It is clear (the Department of Energy) should never have issued the loan guarantee to Solyndra," the report said, adding that a subsequent decision to restructure the terms "violated the plain language of the law."  . . .

HotAir has this: "OMB warned WH to cut losses on Solyndra," but their concerns were overridden by Jack Lew.

Instead of heeding her advice, Lew overrode the concerns and pushed for the second round of investors to attempt a rescue.  We ended up losing nearly four times what taxpayers would have lost had Lew and the DoE cut their losses when it became clear that Solyndra was a bad investment.  Why did the Obama administration take that risk?  The investors in Solyndra included George Kaiser, one of Obama’s bundlers from the 2008 election.

Lew got a promotion after this decision, while taxpayers got the shaft.  If that’s the incentive system in this administration, don’t be surprised to see many more Solyndras as Congress pulls back the curtain on Obama’s green-tech subsidy program, which got tens of billions of dollars from his bigger flop, the 2009 stimulus bill.  Congress will have to work overtime to get a sense of just how badly those dollars were spent. . . .