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Loudermilk Questions DOE Official on Defaulted Government Loans

Washington, March 9, 2016
During a recent Energy and Oversight Subcommittee hearing, Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA) questioned the Executive Director of the Department of Energy (DOE) Loan programs Office, Mark McCall, on the risks associated with the Department of Energy’s (DOE) controversial program to provide federal loan guarantees to green energy companies.

Watch Rep. Loudermilk’s full exchange with DOE officials by clicking HERE or on the video below.

“Several years into this experiment, it is becoming clear these efforts have wasted vast amounts of taxpayer dollars; yet, in August 2015, the President announced that the Department of Energy's Loan Program Office would make an additional $1 billion in loan guarantees available for commercial scale distributed energy projects. This committee welcomes and embraces new businesses and technologies, but it is important that they be brought to commercial scale by market forces, not political whims,” said Rep. Loudermilk.

Background
According to Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimates, the total cost for the current loan portfolio is $2.2 billion. As part of the stimulus in 2009, Congress temporarily expanded the loan guarantee program, and gave DOE another $2.4 billion to subsidize the costs of loan guarantees. DOE rushed loan applications and caved to political pressure from the White House, issuing $16 billion in loan guarantees to 26 projects, including to the solar energy company Solyndra, which defaulted on a $500 million loan guarantee.

Committee members asked the new executive director of DOE’s Loan Program Office, Mark McCall, if he would commit to a higher level of transparency and provide the Science Committee with email communications surrounding loan decisions. Mr. McCall was unwilling to commit to providing these documents that would expose how decisions are made concerning billions of taxpayer dollars.

For more information about the hearing, including witness testimony and the archived webcast, please visit the Committee’s website.