A prominent liberal super-PAC is accusing Mitt Romney of hypocrisy after the Republican presidential nominee said that shuttered green-energy company Solyndra was an example of "crony capitalism."
Romney made the remarks Thursday outside the plant of the bankrupt solar panel manufacturer, which defaulted on more than $500 million in government-backed loans late last year.
"This building, this half-a-billion-dollar taxpayer investment, represents a serious conflict of interest on the part of the president and his team," Romney said, according to CNN.
Some Solyndra executives were donors to the president's 2008 campaign, and Republicans have suggested the White House might have encouraged the Energy Department to authorize the loans for political reasons.
But the ad from American Bridge shows examples of donors to Romney's gubernatorial campaign receiving similar loans on the state level, and then going bankrupt.
Playing off an article in the Boston Herald, the ad highlights the stories of two companies — Acusphere and Spherics Inc. — that received $4.5 million in loans from a Massachusetts technology investment program created while Romney was governor. Both firms had ties to prominent Romney donors, and eventually defaulted on $2.1 million of the state loans.
"What would you call that, Mitt?" on-screen text asks before playing video of Romney decrying "a pattern of crony capitalism."
The White House has defended the loans to Solyndra, arguing most investments in green-energy companies are successful and that it is important to give government support to an emerging market.
"I would simply say what we've said all along, which is that this president is committed to the proposition that we will not cede the industries of the future to the Chinese or the Europeans or the Brazilians or the Indians, or any other nation," White House press secretary Jay Carney said Tuesday.
"Clean tech industries will continue to grow. And some, apparently, in this country are willing to see those industries developed and the jobs created, those industries created in other countries than the United States."
The Romney campaign has battered President Obama on the issue. It released a Web ad earlier this week mocking the investment and repeatedly referencing the company on the campaign trail.
“Have you seen the Solyndra corporation headquarters? You probably have,” Romney asked at a Silicon Valley fundraiser Wednesday.
“That’s what happens when government puts in hundreds of millions of dollars into an enterprise.
"And by the way, the president doesn’t understand, when you invest like that in one solar energy company, it makes it harder for solar technology generally because the scores of other entrepreneurs in the solar field suddenly lost their opportunity to get capital. Who wants to put money into a solar company when the government puts half a billion into one of its choice? So instead of encouraging solar energy, he discouraged it.”
