Political Quotes

“Before I yield to the Chairman of the Oversight Subcommittee, let me yield myself 1\1/2\ minutes just to respond. While it's true that the program was signed into law by President Bush in '05, I would note that the Bush administration did not issue a single loan guarantee, in large part because it struggled to identify any company whose energy products were both meritorious and yet unable to secure private financing. So, further, Bush's OMB actually reviewed this project, the Solyndra loan guarantee application, but it rejected it in January of 2009 in the waning days because of the concerns over the long-term viability of the project. Now, this administration would go ahead with over $15 billion in loan guarantees through 2011. Solyndra, Abound Solar, Beacon Power, they've all gone bankrupt. And I'm afraid this is just the tip of the iceberg, which was why we moved ahead with this legislation. Without our action, without the action of our committee, there was strong belief, in fact, that this administration was going to go ahead yet with hundreds of millions of dollars more for Solyndra. That's not the answer to this thing. That's not how to save it. Our role at Energy and Commerce, we had a very aggressive chairman, Cliff Stearns, the chairman of the Oversight Investigation Subcommittee. He led the investigation. He identified the many faults, and now we've come back with corrective legislation to make sure that it doesn't happen again. That's our role.…”