Did You Know...

**Written by Doug Powers

In the 2010 State of the Union speech, President Obama spoke about all the jobs that were being created via the Department of Energy’s “clean energy” loan program, including plenty at Solyndra:

During his speech at the Solyndra plant in 2010, Obama said “When it’s completed in a few months, Solyndra expects to hire a thousand workers to manufacture solar panels and sell them across America and around the world.”

Joe Biden got in on the “DoE loans program creates jobs” thing as well:

The loan to Solyndra will allow you to build a new manufacturing facility and with it almost immediately generate 3000 new well paying construction jobs. And once your facility opens, there will be about 1000 permanent new jobs here at Solyndra and in the surrounding business community and hundreds more to install your growing output of solar panels throughout the country.

Here’s Energy Secretary Steven Chu announcing that a partial guarantee for an $852 million loan had been finalized to support the development of the troubled Genesis Solar Project:

“This project creates jobs, avoids greenhouse gas emissions and helps strengthen our nation’s renewable energy future.”

Chu talking up the now bankrupt Abound Solar:

“Not only is this investment creating thousands of jobs, but it is also increasing our renewable energy manufacturing capacity and putting us on the path for our future prosperity.”

There are many other examples of the administration touting job creation as one justification to keep the loan program alive.

Fast forward the tape to today:

David Frantz, who runs the Energy Department’s loan guarantee program, contradicted President Obama today by telling Congress that the program is not designed to create jobs.

“The predominance of our portfolio — and the objective, really, of the act — is to be creating large infrastructure, utility-scale projects; and, by definition, they are not a multiplier for job creation,” Frantz told a Joint Hearing on the No More Solyndras Act that would ban the loan guarantee program.

Somebody didn’t get the memo:

**Written by Doug Powers

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