At the same time, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney called the House probe into the $535 million federal loan to the solar panel firm that is now bankrupt and under FBI investigation, partisan. “We have been enormously cooperative with legitimate oversight. In this investigation alone we’ve turned over 85,000 pages of documents,” Carney told reporters Thursday. “We will continue to cooperate with this committee in their investigation. With regards to the subpoena, I don’t have anything to announce. But, I can say, as the White House counsel made clear in her letter, the subpoena was over broad, unnecessary and in my words, if something seems partisan, it probably is.”
Thursday afternoon, while the White House press briefing was going on, the House Energy and Commerce Committee released a statement from full committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Chairman of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) “This morning, the White House Counsel’s Office informed the committee that it plans to begin providing responsive materials to the committee's subpoena,” the statement from Upton and Stearns said. “As we have said before, we stand ready to work with the White House on its document production and believe it is entirely possible for the White House to produce information for an investigation that the White House Counsel herself has acknowledged is both legitimate and necessary,” the statement said. We remain hopeful that the White House will demonstrate some good faith efforts of compliance and provide the internal Solyndra-related communications we have been seeking,” it added.
Put in context, the $535 million loan is more than 35 states get each year in highway money, said Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) during a Senate floor speech on Thursday. “Solyndra went bankrupt recently, and $500 million is still a considerable amount of money. I’ll put that in perspective,” Paul said. “In Kentucky, we get about $420 million to pave our roads annually out of the gas tax that you pay. Thirty-five states get about the same amount, somewhere under $500 million. “Yet the president saw fit, because he’s been consumed with this environmental extremism, he saw fit to give $500 million – more than 35 states get for their highway funds – he saw fit to take that money and give it to one political contributor because he has decided that he wants more expensive electricity,” Paul continued. “He wants electricity that comes and is produced by people who are his campaign contributors.”
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