(Washington, D.C.) – Today, Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) expressed its opposition to any additional “stimulus” spending that would increase America’s deficit and debt while doing nothing to spur economic recovery.  The statement came in response to both President Obama’s Thursday evening speech to Congress and the decision by solar panel manufacturer Solyndra to lay off 1,100 workers and file for bankruptcy despite receiving a $535 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy (DOE) as part of the so-called stimulus package of 2009, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).  Solyndra, based in Fremont, California, became the third stimulus-funded solar company to go under in the past 30 days after SpectraWatt, headquartered Oregon, and Evergreen, Inc., out of Massachusetts, both declared bankruptcy in August.  In his much-anticipated speech to Congress, the President is expected to call for more spending and further government intervention in an effort to boost anemic job growth.  

“The President and his congressional supporters are grossly out of touch,” said CAGW President Tom Schatz.  “Instead of learning from his mistakes and reversing course, President Obama will likely ask the American public to finance further boondoggles.  Rather than sucking wealth from the private sector in order to filter it through Washington in a futile attempt to ‘stimulate’ job creation, the proper course going forward is to eliminate wasteful spending, cut taxes, and abolish burdensome regulations.”

The DOE’s loan guarantee program (LGP) was established under the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and is intended to support projects that reduce air pollutants or greenhouse gases.  The program’s website boasts that it aids “innovative clean energy technologies that are typically unable to obtain conventional private financing due to high technology risks.”  In 2009, the program, which currently has $37.8 billion in outstanding guarantees, received a boost of $6 billion from the stimulus bill. 

A July, 2010 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report concluded that the LGP lacked clear goals and failed to hold all applicants to the same standards.  GAO said that the LGP “has treated applicants inconsistently, favoring some and disadvantaging others,” and that “some applicants … receive conditional commitments before incurring expenses that other applicants had to pay.  It is unclear how DOE could have sufficient information to negotiate conditional commitments without such reviews.” 

“Solyndra’s bankruptcy is another example of the waste that results when government officials try to play stock broker with the public’s money, and it casts a very unflattering light on the rest of DOE’s loan guarantees, along with all 2009 stimulus spending.  If this is the Obama administration’s idea of how America can ‘invest’ in its economic recovery, taxpayers would much rather keep the money and do it themselves,” Schatz concluded.

Citizens Against Government Waste is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, mismanagement and abuse in government.