Mitt Romney made numerous bogus claims in the Oct. 3 debate about the $90 billion in grants, guaranteed loans and tax breaks for energy projects in the stimulus bill:
Romney falsely claimed “about half” of the clean-energy companies that received U.S.-backed loans “have gone out of business.” But 26 companies received loan guarantees under a loan program cited by Romney, and three of those have filed for bankruptcy. The three firms were approved for about 6 percent of the loan guarantees.
In a fundraising email, a conservative PAC claims President Barack Obama is raising natural gas prices to pay for failed green energy companies. But the letter offers only false claims and twisted facts to support this conspiracy theory.
The email says Solar Trust of America, a now-bankrupt company, received “the second largest loan ever handed out by the Department of Energy.” STA never took a government-backed dime. The firm was conditionally approved for the financing, but ultimately turned it down.
An ad from the Romney campaign strains facts to make its point that federal grants and loans to green-energy companies were improperly steered to Obama’s political backers, and that federal money was wasted on failing companies that are now laying off employees. It claims the “inspector general said …
A TV ad by a conservative group gives some factually challenged answers to its own rhetorical question, “How exactly does President Obama spend your tax dollars?”
It wrongly claims that the boss of the General Services Administration “couldn’t make it to Vegas because she had meetings planned … at Solyndra.” That’s not true. The claim linking the two scandals is based on an inaccurate April 10 report that was quickly corrected — nearly two weeks before the ad first aired.
Rep. Darrell Issa, who has accused the administration of “political interference” to benefit a solar energy company, has falsely claimed that a letter he wrote to the Energy Department on behalf of a California car maker merely requested a decision — “yes or no” — on the company’s loan application. In fact, the California Republican wrote to “express support” for the company’s loan to develop an electric car. He wrote that approval of the loan would “greatly assist a leading developer of electric vehicles in my district”
President Obama exaggerated when defending his administration’s approval of a $535 million loan guarantee to Solyndra, a now-defunct solar company.
Obama referred to Solyndra’s loan at an Oct. 6 press conference as “a loan guarantee program that predates me.” That’s not accurate. It’s true that the Energy Policy Act of 2005 created a loan guarantee program for clean-energy companies developing “innovative technologies.” But Solyndra’s loan guarantee came under another program created by the president’s 2009 stimulus for companies developing “commercially available technologies.”