California Rep. Darell Issa added to the growing scrutiny over U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu’s 2009 loan guarantee to the now bankrupt solar panel manufacturer Solyndra. In an interview Saturday with The Daily Caller, Issa expressed concern over Chu and the Energy Department.
“Secretary Chu is a brilliant individual who seems to be [in] over his head,” Issa, the House oversight committee chairman, said. “And that’s not a political statement. … I think everyone wants to see DOE succeed,” Issa added.
During his testimony before Congress Thursday, Chu was accused of approving the loan to Solyndra for political reasons, a claim that the former Nobel prize winning physicist thoroughly refuted. “Fundamentally, this company and several others got caught in a very bad tsunami if you will,” Chu said of his choice to approve Solyndra for the loan. “If you look back and look at the time, the decisions being made, was there incompetence, was there any influence of a political nature? And I would have to say no,” the Secretary of Energy added.
Regardless of Chu’s claims, Issa’s Committee on Oversight and Government Reform plans to investigate the Department of Energy. The California Republican has repeatedly said the Department of Energy has “committed malpractice.”
Speaking over the weekend, Issa chided Chu, saying the agency head may have to consider resigning.
“Right now there’s a question about whether or not he [Chu] is able to turn the ship around after a series of failures in which he himself said technically they did the right thing, but obviously, realistically, they did the wrong thing in the [loan guarantee] awards,” said Issa. “So that’s one of those where we’re hoping that people bolster around or, in fact, somebody that could handle it — maybe less smart, but more capable — would come in.”
