WASHINGTON -- In what amounts to the highest-profile testimony yet in the ongoing Solyndra saga, Energy Secretary Steven Chu took full responsibility for approving the $535 million loan guarantee to the solar energy company but said the decision was completely uninfluenced by politics.
"As the Secretary of Energy, the final decisions on Solyndra were mine, and I made them with the best interest of the taxpayer in mind," said Chu in prepared remarks before the House Energy and Commerce Committee's investigative panel on Thursday. "I want to be clear," he added. "Over the course of Solyndra's loan guarantee, I did not make any decision based on political considerations."
Testifying under oath, Chu said he could not have predicted the changes in the market that sharply reduced the price of solar panels, rending Solyndra's product uncompetitive. The California-based company went belly-up in August, leaving taxpayers on the hook for half a billion dollars.
Asked how much of taxpayers' money could be recovered, Chu wasn't optimistic. "That remains to be seen," he replied. "Not very much."
Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), the chairman of the subcommittee at the center of the investigation, has pushed back against Chu's claim that the decision-making process surrounding Solyndra was not a political one. On Thursday, he tore into Chu for signing off on the Department of Energy's loan guarantee in 2009 and for overseeing its restructuring earlier this year, even as the company was on the brink of financial collapse.
"Throughout all of this, you seem to have an unawareness," Stearns said to Chu three hours into the hearing. "How many loan programs are going to fail?"
"Well, it's hard to predict," said Chu.
When Stearns failed to get a hard number from Chu, he pivoted to talking points about how former Obama administration campaign aide Dan Carol in an email earlier this year encouraged the Obama administration to remove Chu from his position. He later told reporters he backed Carol's request.
"I agree with Dan Carol's email that at this point that he probably should be replaced by the president," said Stearns, according to Politico.
Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) has dismissed the multi-pronged investigation of Solyndra's loan guarantee -- which House Republicans have been milking for all its political worth, strategically releasing 185,000 pages of documents to the media -- as little more than political theater.
"It's time for House Republicans to stop dancing on Solyndra's grave and start getting serious about clean energy policy," Waxman said at Thursday's hearing.
"I support investigating Solyndra," he added, "but I do not support the way Chairman Stearns and Chairman Upton have been running this investigation. They have held an empty chair hearing ... humiliated witnesses for asserting their constitutional rights ... and provoked a gratuitous conflict with the White House."
While House Republicans have accused the Energy Department -- which first began reviewing the deal during the Bush administration -- of engaging in risky behavior, some have themselves sought aid for struggling renewable energy companies in their home districts.
The Washington Post on Wednesday reported that House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.), who dug into Chu for failing to see warning signs on Solyndra, himself missed red flags for United Solar, a Michigan solar company he touted. From the Post:
The fate of United Solar mirrors Solyndra's in many ways. It had its own proprietary technology, but to hold on to sales it was selling units at a loss. Its biggest market has been Italy, which pays solar companies a subsidized premium for electricity. Italy, now pressed to cut its budget in the face of financial pressures, accounted for just less than half of United Solar's sales in the fiscal year that ended June 30.
That history didn't keep Upton from going on the offensive on Thursday, asking Chu whether he thought he should apologize to taxpayers for approving the loan, a suggestion Chu rebuffed.
"It is extremely unfortunate what has happened with Solyndra," Chu acknowledged. "Was there incompetence? Was there any influence of a political nature? I would have to say no." He added that in hindsight he should never have approved the program, "But you don't make decisions by fast-forwarding two years in the future. I wish I could do that."
Despite hard hits from Upton and others, the tenor on Thursday was more respectful than it has been in hearings past. Multiple lawmakers said they considered Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, to be a man of integrity, with Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) going so far as to suggest that Chu may be being set up to be the "fall guy."
"I don't think you should resign," Barton said. "I do think that you are a man of integrity trying to do your job as best as you can."
The White House has dismissed any criticism of Chu, and in his testimony on Thursday the secretary of energy implored lawmakers to see the Department's loan program in a larger light.
"When it comes to the clean energy race, America faces a simple choice: compete or accept defeat," Chu said. "I believe we can and must compete."
Chu emphasized the need for investment in solar energy, noting that China is far ahead of the U.S. in funding the renewable energy market. What's more, he said, the Energy Department is expected to employ more than 60,000 Americans.
"We are disappointed in the outcome of this particular loan," Chu said.
WATCH Chu make his case for continuing to invest in clean energy: