Waxman to Issa: Get Solyndra facts straight

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) is rebutting House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa’s (R-Calif.) claim that Waxman helped the now-bankrupt solar company Solyndra secure its $535 million federal loan guarantee.

Waxman said in a letter to Issa on Monday that he had no role in the financing.

“I am writing to let you know that I had no involvement in the selection of the Solyndra loan. In fact, the first time I met with representatives from Solyndra was in July 2011, when the company’s CEO, Brian Harrison, informed me — erroneously, it turned out — that the company’s prospects were bright,” writes Waxman, the top Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Committee.

Issa made the allegation when announcing Sept. 20 that his committee would broadly investigate federal loan support to private companies. His probe joins the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s ongoing Solyndra investigation.

Waxman once headed the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. “As a former chairman of the Oversight Committee, I know that the public pays attention to statements the chair makes. That gives whoever occupies the chair of the Oversight Committee a special responsibility to be accurate,” Waxman’s letter states.

But an Issa spokeswoman pushed back against Waxman’s letter, arguing that Waxman is tethered to the stimulus law provision under which the California solar company received federal aid.

“As the then-chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, there’s probably no one in Congress more responsible for the flawed provisions in the stimulus that led to Solyndra’s special treatment than Congressman Waxman. This is a clear case of a former chairman unwilling to accept appropriate responsibility for failing to properly vet the stimulus proposal before it was rushed into law,” said spokeswoman Becca Watkins.

The 2009 stimulus package expanded the advanced energy loan guarantee program that was first authorized in a 2005 bill signed into law under then-President George W. Bush.

Issa mentioned Waxman in announcing the Oversight panel’s probe on C-SPAN a week ago.

“There’s been this attitude that somehow government can weigh in with loan guarantees and money and pick winners, specific company winners, and losers. We see that as a backdoor, easy way to end up with corruption in government because the people picking winners and losers, in this case Solyndra, include Henry Waxman, one of my colleagues, then a chairman, it includes the president, it includes people who come to the White House 16 times and are the largest bundlers for the president,” Issa said Sept. 20.

Issa later added: 

“In the case of the president’s people, in the case of Henry Waxman, clearly you had people who saw a link between their campaign contributions, their ideological bent and these companies.”

This post was updated at 10:23 a.m.

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