President Obama visited Mountain View on Monday to promote his new job plan at a town hill meeting, despite avoidance of some issues.
He answered pre-screened questions on a variety of topics, including taxes, healthcare costs, education and jobs, generally steering the discussion towards promoting his plan.
The event overall wasn’t very rigorous, filled with questions such as “would you please raise my taxes?” posed by former Google executive Doug Edwards, though Obama did address some issues of concern, such as one question about what he would do to reduce “the onerous regulations and taxation on small businesses.”
The president said it was hard to say which taxes and regulations the question was referring to.
“But, as I said, we’ve actually cut taxes for small businesses 16 times since I’ve been in office, so taxes for small businesses are lower now than they were when I came into office,” replied Obama.
Absent throughout the hour-long town hall session was any talk of the kind of green energy initiatives the president has pushed for in the past.
His visit to the Bay Area was overshadowed to some extent by the Solyndra scandal, where a Fremont-based solar panel company that received a $535 million loan backed by the Department of Energy went bankrupt last month.
While reasons such as Chinese competition have been given to ostensibly explain Solyndra’s failure, the company is also being investigated by both congress and the FBI.
The fact that executives refused to answer questions concerning the scandal, exercising the Fifth Amendment at a recent congressional hearing, seems to suggest something more sinister than a bad business plan.
Obama is not entirely to blame for the bankruptcy, as the loan guarantee program was created and approved Solyndra for participation in it under the Bush administration. Though Obama solidified its participation and heavily promoted Solyndra as a model for businesses to follow.
“It’s here that companies like Solyndra are leading the way towards a brighter and more prosperous future,” Obama said.
These and similar comments seem rather ill-conceived in crystal-clear hindsight.
This scandal may not damage Obama’s poll numbers, though it may damage his reputation on green technology.
Obama may be able to shake the lasting effects of this scandal, particularly if he distances himself from green energy, which he already seemed to be doing by not addressing the Solyndra issue at the town hall meeting.
Both SolarCity and First Solar Inc., two other solar companies, announced last week that they will not be able to meet Department of Energy deadlines to secure loans through the loan guarantee program due to complications surrounding the Solyndra scandal.
This has negative effects on domestic green energy investment.
Energy Department Loans Program executive director Jonathan Silver testified to a House of Representatives panel earlier this month that other countries such as Germany, Canada, Britain, Australia, and India are surpassing the U.S. in renewable energy.
“But none have been as aggressive as the Chinese government,” said Silver, “which last year alone provided more than $30 billion in credit to its country’s largest solar manufacturers. That’s roughly twenty times larger than America’s investment in the same time period.”
Supporters of the Energy Department’s loan program point out that by its very nature of guaranteeing loans to provide security for investors, it was inevitable that some of the subsidized companies like Solyndra would fail, though overall investment in green energy has increased.
Silver told the House subcommittee he had “no idea” why Solyndra headquarters was raided by the FBI, and “no reason” to believe the Department of Energy was misled by the company.
Even if Solyndra’s collapse was a legitimate failure, it has become the face of the entire loan program, though it is just one visible side-effect of a program that is improving the economy overall.
