Solar firm that received state loans under Romney files for bankruptcy

A solar panel manufacturer that received state loans during Mitt Romney's time as governor of Massachusetts has filed for bankruptcy, prompting Democrats to argue that the Republican presidential nominee has been hypocritical in his attacks on the Obama administration's loans to failed green-energy company Solyndra.

Konarka Power Plastic, a solar technology company based in Lowell, Mass., filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection Friday. But like Solyndra, Konarka received government loans to help subsidize it's business, including $1.5 million in state loans from a renewable energy trust fund while Romney was governor.

The Obama campaign was quick to seize on the news, pointing out that the company's failure closely resembled that of Solyndra. Republicans have held up that company's failure as an example of waste under the president's stimulus program. During a campaign swing through California last week, Romney held an impromptu press conference outside the Solyndra factory, calling the setting "a symbol not of success, but of failure."

“Every day we see a new example of Mitt Romney’s hypocrisy. Just one day after he pulled a political stunt outside Solyndra, we learned even more about his record of picking winners and losers in Massachusetts when one of the companies he gave a loan to went bankrupt," said Obama spokeswoman Lis Smith in a statement. "Mitt Romney may think he can play by a different set of rules, but he can’t hide his history of giving millions of dollars in government loans to campaign donors.”

As with Solyndra — where Obama appeared in 2010 to tour the factory and heralded the company as a symbol of the success of stimulus programs — Romney visited Konarka to tout the loans in a 2003 press conference at the company's headquarters.

Romney's campaign responded by charging the president with attempting to distract from a soft economy and lagging jobs numbers.

“President Obama has a lot of questions to answer about why he used taxpayer dollars to reward wealthy campaign donors for bad ideas like Solyndra, yet he is unwilling to focus on creating jobs for the millions of Americans who are struggling. His distortions and distractions will not put a single American back to work," said Romney spokesman Ryan Williams in a statement.

The campaign also noted that unlike Solyndra's ties to the president, nobody from Konarka had given to the Romney campaign and the company had paid back the loan distributed during Romney's tenure. Williams also noted that the decision to loan Konarka money was made before Romney became governor, and that Democratic governor and Obama surrogate Deval Patrick had approved a similar loan to the company in 2009.

Still, the incident could be problematic for Romney, who has argued repeatedly on the campaign trail against that the president was "picking winners and losers" in subsidizing green-energy industries.

“That is not the nature of how America works. I’m afraid the reason that the stimulus has been unsuccessful, that the turnaround has taken so long to occur, and the recovery’s been so tepid, is that the president fails to understand the basic nature of free enterprise in America," Romney said outside Solyndra on Thursday.

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