Did White House order “no more DOE Loans to be funded” in order to protect campaign financiers other investments?
No More DOE Advanced Auto Tech Loans Likely
Article From: Automotive Design & Production AutoBeat Group
The U.S. Dept. of Energy is not considering any further loans under its $25 billion Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing program, even though it has agreed to allocate only about $8.4 billion so far.
A study by the U.S. Government Accountability Office notes that DOE hasn’t made a loan under the ATVM program in two years. It says most would-be applicants it interviewed believe the cost of the lengthy process, reviews and conditions place on the loan itself outweigh the benefits.
DOE says it considers seven pending loans worth nearly $1.5 billion “inactive” because applicants lack sufficient equity or their technology is not sufficiently ready to commercialize.
The six-year-old ATVM program has approved at least six loans to date:
$5.9 billion to Ford Motor Co. in September 2009 to upgrade factories in five states to make more fuel-efficient vehicles
$1.4 billion to Nissan North America in January 2010 to prepare its factory in Smyrna, Tenn., to make electric vehicles
$465 million to Tesla Motors Inc. in January 2010 to launch EV production at its plant in Freemont, Calif., and to set up capacity to make batteries and powertrain components for plug-ins
$529 million to Fisker Automotive Inc. in April 2010 to develop two plug-in hybrid models (DOE froze the loan early last year because Fisker didn’t meet performance targets)
$50 million to the Vehicle Production Group to develop a six-passenger, wheelchair-accessible vehicle than runs on compressed natural gas
$24 million for Tenneco Inc. in 2010 to produce emission control systems for light-duty vehicles (Tenneco withdrew its application in March 2010)
ADP
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Crony Socialism – House Committee: President Obama Used DOE Loan Money To Help Harry Reid’s 2010 Reelection Campaign – Emails Show Specific Intent of DOE spending to support Harry Reid….
Posted by sundance
For any other President, with any other media, at any other time in our nation, this story alone would lead to impeachment….. Congressional Oversight Committee has specific fact-based proof that President Obama collaborated with the Dept. Of Energy to steer green energy/stimulus funding money into Nevada to support Harry Reid’s 2010 election. They openly admit as such.
WASHINGTON – President Obama claims that political considerations did not influence the Energy Department’s green energy loan program, but newly-released internal emails show that his administration subsidized Nevada companies in order to help Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., win his 2010 reelection campaign.
And these are decisions, by the way, that are made by the Department of Energy, they have nothing to do with politics,” Obama said last week when asked about the green companies that have gone bankrupt despite receiving taxpayer support.
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released DOE emails today that compromise Obama’s position on two counts: one, the emails show that Obama himself was involved in approving loans; two, DOE officials were keenly aware of the political interests at stake, as they regarded the loans as a way for the White House to help Reid by giving him a way to brag about bringing federal money into Nevada.
Messages from late in 2010 demonstrate that DOE officials were concerned that President Obama’s personal desire to get DOE loans approved was putting tax payer money at risk.
“I am growing increasingly worried about a fast track process imposed on us at the POTUS level based on this chaotic process that we are undergoing,” Loan Program Office Senior Credit Advisor Jim McCrea wrote to loan program executive director Jonathan Silver in October 2010. “[B]y designing the fast track process and having it approved at the POTUS level (which is an absolute waste of his time!) it legitimizes every element and it becomes embedded like the 55% recovery rate which also was imposed by POTUS.”
Silver was sympathetic to McCrea, but said it was too late to change course. “While I might agree with you intellectually, that is not where we are,” he wrote back. “Let’s finish this process and get back to business.”
By that point, McCrea might have regretted the political interest in the loan program, but he was quite happy about it only months earlier.
In December, 2009, McCrea forwarded one of his colleagues an article about how Reid would struggle in the 2010 campaign along with a comment on how it might affect the DOE loan program.
“Reid may be desperate,” McCrea wrote. “WH may want to help. Short term considerations may be more important than longer term considerations and what’s a billion anyhow?” That’s a troublin