Taxpayers could be on the hook for $200 million if the company defaults on their $529 million DOE backed loan, according to Jordan:

GRETA VAN SUSTEREN: [...] What is the story?

JIM JORDAN: Just a pattern at the Department of Energy. It’s not the first company as you mentioned. You had Solyndra, Beacon Power. Abound solar. A123 Battery and Fisker. You have several more companies on the verge. There is a great piece in today’s Wall Street Journal Kim Strassel, they will tell you all the time they base these decisions on the merits of the so-called project and the company. But yet when you go through the facts, Fisker for example, CCC credit rating. Junk status.

GRETA VAN SUSTEREN: Which is why they had to go federal, because no private person would lend money.

JIM JORDAN: And I know what point you care about and we all care about is and what that does, too, is crowd out worthy companies from getting private investment. Because a lot of private investment will follow [and say] “well if the government is backing this” then  maybe that is where we should private investment at the opportunity cost of helping some other worthy project out there. CCC credit rating. The loan value was twice that of the collateral. Now who does something like that? Only the government, only the government and Department of Energy with your tax dollars and we have an e-mail from the CEO of Fisker saying we need the loan approved now because I can’t meet payroll. So they couldn’t meet payroll and under collatoralized to half the value of the loan, had a junk credit rating and yet they get your money. It has to be either complete incompetence which they say “no that is not the case” or it is political connections and that is what we point out or both maybe frankly.

Carney called the “broader array” of investments in alternative energy “positive and necessary” even though the government’s misadventures in venture capitalism have cost taxpayers billions of dollars.

“I think that the necessity that we have as a nation to move forward on investments in alternative energy, to make sure that we develop the industries of the future in this country … as opposed to importing alternative energy in a manner that we for so long imported fossil fuel energy, is absolutely the right thing to do, and this president’s committed to it,” Carney said. “The fact is the broader array of investments have been positive and necessary, and the overall need to invest in alternative technologies in the energy field is essential for our energy independence in the future and our national security interests.”

Carney dismissed the documents warning the Energy Department about Fisker as a “false controversy,” but history shows this was yet another in a long line of green energy flops championed by this administration.

The Washington Free Beacon reported Fisker’s long-range luxury car, called the Karma, cost more than $100,000 but was saddled with a failing grade from Consumer Reports, faced multiple technical problems, and was temporarily halted after Fisker’s battery manufacturer, A123 Systems, went bankrupt:

Fisker was one of several companies to receive millions in direct loans from the Department of Energy under the Alternative Technology Vehicle Manufacturing loan program.

The department approved a $529 million dollar loan to Fisker to support the development of two different electric cars, the Karma and Nina. Only a portion of the loan was delivered after the company failed to meet development milestones.

It is now facing a lawsuit from workers arguing they did not receive the legally mandated forewarning of their firing.

The best-known example of a green energy failure was Solyndra, the solar panel firm that received a $535-million loan in 2009 and went under two years later. Critics slammed the lost investment as a prime example of crony capitalism by the Obama administration.

Solopower, a California-based solar panel company which received hundreds of million dollars in federal and state incentives, was reported last month to be struggling with production delays and layoffs.

Obama earlier touted A123 Systems, a battery maker that received more than $250 million in taxpayer funding, as a successful example of public investment in green energy, but it went bankrupt last fall.

Abound Solar and First Solar also have floundered despite huge funding from taxpayers.

Fisker Automotive’s Karma, a long-range luxury car, had a sticker cost of more than $100,000. The car earned a failing grade from Consumer Reports, faced multiple technical problems, and was temporarily halted after Fisker’s battery manufacturer, A123 Systems, went bankrupt.

Fisker was one of several companies to receive millions in direct loans from the Department of Energy under the Alternative Technology Vehicle Manufacturing loan program.

The department approved a $529 million dollar loan to Fisker to support the development of two different electric cars, the Karma and Nina. Only a portion of the loan was delivered after the company failed to meet development milestones.

Fisker’s bankruptcy announcement has been expected for weeks. The company recovered only 10 percent of its claim against A123 for contractual failures and in April laid off 75 percent of its workforce.

It is now facing a lawsuit from workers who contend they did not receive the legally mandated forewarning of their firing.

The company missed its first loan payment, totaling $10 million, to the federal government on Monday. The Department of Energy disclosed this week it seized more than $20 million from the company’s assets on April 11 and will apply that money to the loan.

It is unclear if the federal government will face losses from its loan to Fisker.

Fisker’s founder Henrik Fisker and current chief operating officer Bernhard Koehler will testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee alongside Nicholas Whitcombe, a senior investment officer for the Department of Energy’s Loan Program Office.

The hearing is titled “Examining the Department of Energy’s Bad Bet on Fisker Automotive.”

Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) has criticized the Department of Energy’s efforts to support the green energy sector.

“Attempts to create an artificial green economy have instead created a ‘house of cards’ economy,” Issa said in December when A123’s bankruptcy was announced.

A123 itself received a grant from the Department of Energy. A Chinese firm now owns the battery manufacturer and renamed it B456 Systems.

Fisker and A123 are the latest in a string of failures of companies the Department of Energy supported financially.

“It’s certainly not an outlier for the loan or loan guarantee programs,” said Nicolas Loris, an economist at the Heritage Foundation.

Fisker is the twentieth business that has gone bankrupt after participating in the loan or loan guarantee program, Loris said.

The bankruptcy of solar panel manufacturer Solyndra was the highest-profile failure of a government-supported green energy company. Solyndra was the first loan guarantee recipient under the 2009 stimulus, with the federal government guaranteeing more than $500 million in loans.

The government was projected to recover less than 20 percent of the portion of the loan that had been disbursed, according to a settlement plan in October. The government could still recover the entire loan in a lawsuit against Chinese solar panel manufacturers.

Mirror manufacturer Flabeg Solar went bankrupt after receiving tax credits from the federal government. The bankruptcy potentially delayed some government-backed solar power projects that were planning on using Flabeg’s mirrors.

President Barack Obama, who targeted much of the 2009 economic stimulus package at the green energy sector, reiterated his support in his most recent State of the Union address.

“Last year, wind energy added nearly half of all new power capacity in America,” he said. “So let’s generate even more. Solar energy gets cheaper by the year—so let’s drive costs down even further. As long as countries like China keep going all-in on clean energy, so must we.”

The failure of Fisker is indicative of the government’s inability to prop up whole sectors of the economy, said William Yeatman, an energy policy expert at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

“Industrial policy doesn’t work,” he said. “It never has and it never will.”

Yeatman said the government subsidized both the battery manufacturer and the car manufacturer in Fisker’s case, beyond subsidizing the car’s purchase with tax credits.

A business’ success after receiving help from the federal government does not justify the tax dollars invested in the company, Loris said.

The federal subsidies crowd out private investment in successful companies, he said, while the failing companies should not have received taxpayer support in the first place.

“It’s just kind of depressing that this much money was wasted,” Yeatman said.

Flabeg Solar U.S. Corp., a mirror manufacturer based in Pennsylvania, filed for bankruptcy on Tuesday after it could not afford to pay several former employees their severance packages, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported.

The American subsidiary of a German mirror manufacturer, Flabeg Solar produces mirrors for “concentrating solar power projects” and “other solar technologies,” according to its website. It lists two ongoing solar projects, one in California and one in Nevada, as its customers.

Flabeg is reported to have received millions of dollars in financial assistance from federal and sate governments. Pennsylvania helped the mirror manufacturer build its plant near Pittsburgh with $9 million in grants and loans. The Obama administration awarded Flabeg $10.2 million in tax credits, according to the Post-Gazette.

It is unclear if Flabeg ever used the tax credits. Neither Flabeg nor the Treasury Department returned requests for comment.

Flabeg’s website indicates it supplied both the Genesis Solar Energy Project and the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project with mirrors. Both projects have received financial support from the federal government.

The Department of Energy provided a $737 million loan guarantee to help develop the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project in Nevada. The project uses a “molten salt tower” to capture and store the energy. Its owner, SolarReserve, boasts it will be the “largest solar power project of its kind in the world.”

Construction began on the project in 2011. SolarReserve and the Nevada Office of Energy predict the Crescent Dunes project will come online in 2013.

SolarReserve denied that Flabeg’s bankruptcy would affect its operations.

“Flabeg is a supplier of ‘flat glass’ mirrors and there are a number of alternate suppliers in the market that can be utilized to fill the order if necessary,” SolarReserve CEO Kevin Smith said in a statement.

“We don’t expect any significant issues,” Smith said, praising the project as “a tremendous success story for the United States developed technology and the U.S. Department of Energy’s loan guarantee program.”

The Genesis Solar Energy Project in California likewise received financial help from the Department of Energy. The department partially guaranteed an $852 million loan to support the development of the Genesis project, according to the department’s website.

NextEra Energy Resources, the developer of the Genesis project, built the solar energy project in a flood-prone California valley, which performed as expected in the middle of last year, flooding and inflicting “massive” damage on the Genesis project.

The California Energy Commission indicates that the Genesis project is just over 43 percent complete. A NextEra spokesman said the project will come online in two phases, half at the end of 2013 and the other half in late 2014.

Flabeg’s bankruptcy would not impact the Genesis project and it would not need a new supplier of mirrors, the spokesman said. Flabeg’s website indicates that the mirrors’ “delivery period” was in 2011.

This is not the first instance where the federal government has financially supported multiple points on a green energy manufacturing supply chain.

Fisker Automotive had to temporarily stop production of its luxury electric car when its battery manufacturer, A123, went bankrupt.

A123 was subsequently bought by a Chinese company and changed its name to B456.

Flabeg is reportedly open to being acquired, according to the Post-Gazette.

Last week, the company missed a payment on $541 million in debt, and the company’s CEO said he was exploring strategic alternatives. According to state-run news agency Xinhua, the company owes nine creditor banks a total of $1.2 billion. […]

The U.S. Commerce Department announced stiff tariffs on Chinese-made solar panels last year, after finding that Chinese solar cell manufacturers were “dumping” their products on the American market below production costs.

The issue divided the U.S. solar industry, with some manufacturers complaining that Chinese trade practices were driving prices down artificially and smothering U.S. production.

Parent company, Suntech Power, will not file for bankruptcy. Chinese solar panel manufacturers are not alone in having difficulty staying afloat: American solar company Solyndra failed in 2011. Solyndra filed for bankruptcy two years after receiving a $535 million taxpayer-guaranteed loan.

“We’ve got to control our own energy, you know, not only oil and natural gas, which we’ve been investing in, but also, we’ve got to make sure we’re building the energy source of the future, not just thinking about next year, but 10 years from now, 20 years from now,” he said during Tuesday night’s presidential debate. “That’s why we’ve invested in solar and wind and biofuels, energy-efficient cars.”

The controversial stimulus package passed in 2009 allocated some $90 billion for an assortment of green energy projects in an effort to create millions of “shovel ready” jobs.

On the day of the debate, however, one of those “investments” went belly up. Battery maker A123 Systems filed for bankruptcy Tuesday despite receiving more than $250 million in taxpayer funding. The company had reported a net loss of more than $400 million over the past two years.

Obama touted A123 in July 2011 as an example of a successful taxpayer investment in green energy. “Companies like these are taking root and putting people to work in every corner of the country,” he said.

The firm’s bankruptcy exemplifies how the president’s green energy policies have failed, according to one top Republican lawmaker.

“A123’s bankruptcy is a sign that the Obama administration’s green house of cards is starting to collapse,” House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee chairman Cliff Stearns (R., Fla.) told the Washington Examiner.

A123 was a business partner with Fisker Automotive, another taxpayer-financed green energy company that is struggling to survive despite receiving more that $500 million in taxpayer financing.

Fisker was forced to recall a number of its Karma electric vehicles last year due to defective batteries from A123. The company has also received criticism for manufacturing the Karma in Finland despite receiving support from United States taxpayers.

A123 is just the latest green energy company touted by Obama—and funded with taxpayer dollars—to experience financial difficulty. Earlier this year, solar panel firm Amonix Inc. laid off nearly two-thirds of its workforce after receiving a $6 million federal tax credit.

The highest profile failure in Obama’s green energy portfolio is Solyndra, the California solar company that filed for bankruptcy in September 2011. The firm, which was partially owned by prominent Obama campaign bundler George Kaiser, was the recipient of more than $500 million in taxpayer-guaranteed loans.

Kaiser can expect to see a better return on his investment than American taxpayers. As part of a 2010 agreement to restructure Solyndra’s loan, Obama’s Department of Energy granted priority status to private investors such as Kaiser with respect to the first $75 million recovered in the event of the firm’s bankruptcy—a move that many suspect may have violated federal law.

A123, Fisker, and Amonix also have ties to prominent Democratic donors. California investment guru John Doerr, who has contributed more than $170,000 to Democratic campaigns and committees since 2008, owned stakes in each of the companies through his firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

An early and outspoken advocate for federal investment in “green” technology, Doerr was named  in 2009 to the president’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, where he helped craft the $787 billion stimulus package. Of the 27 companies listed in KPCB’s “green-tech” portfolio, 16 received some form of taxpayer support.

This sort of relationship is par for the course when it comes to Obama’s green energy investments.

Elon Musk, who has personally donated more than $100,000 to Obama’s reelection campaign, has ties to companies that have received million of dollars in taxpayer funding over the past four years.

One of those companies, SolarCity, is currently being audited by the Internal Revenue Service and investigated by the Treasury Department’s inspector general amid allegations that the firm misrepresented the value of its investment when applying for stimulus grants.

Musk is also the CEO of and largest investor in Tesla Motors, an electric car company that received a $465 million federal loan in 2009. Steve Westly, a top Obama bundler who was appointed to a White House advisory board on energy policy, is another prominent Tesla investor.

Westly has openly acknowledged that a close relationship with federal lawmakers is key to investing in green technology. In response to a reporter’s question about which green energy companies he likes to invest in, Westly said: “Who cares what I think. Let’s talk about ‘what does Obama like? Here’s what he likes,’ because here’s where the federal government is putting money. And let me tell you, whatever he likes, that’s what I like.”

Executives at BrightSource, a solar energy company, touted the company’s political influence in obtaining a $1.6 billion loan guarantee from the Department of Energy—the same program exploited by the now-bankrupt Solyndra.

“We have a lot of force gearing up to leaverage [sic] them now, including the WH and VP office [Sen. Harry] Reid and [Sen. Dianne] Feinstein, and Gov. [Jerry] Brown” of California, reads an early March 2011 email from Arthur Haubenstock, the company’s vice president of regulatory affairs.

Mr. Haubenstock goes on to question whether the company should push its administration contacts to immediately arrange a call between Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Interior Secretary Kenneth L. Salazar, a project proponent, or keep it in their back pocket “to blast through any last roadblock that may appear …”

Other emails from 2009 and the first 10 months of 2010 show apparent political calculations that BrightSource and affiliate companies hoped to use to their advantage. On Dec. 3, 2009, Bernard Toon—formerly Mr. Biden’s chief of staff who later became a lobbyist for Bechtel Corp., a mammoth construction company and contractor for the Ivanpah project—lays out how the project could help two influential Democratic senators.

“Calls are in to Biden’s staff and I will be approaching the political affairs office at the White House tomorrow as well, as this project could benefit two senators who are in cycle and whose races will be tough next year—[Barbara] Boxer and the Majority Leader, Sen. Reid,” he wrote in the message to BrightSource CEO John Woolard.

Republicans have repeatedly hammered the Obama administration for a string of multibillion dollar loans written to failing companies headed by Obama donors and major Democratic players.

In one of the most memorable moments of the first presidential debate, GOP nominee Mitt Romney criticized Obama over such loan programs saying, “you don’t just pick the winners and losers—you pick the losers.”

Obama’s own words, and those of his closest aides, culled from his first campaign and the early phase of his presidency, tell the story. Cumulatively, the quotations are an anthology of lofty aspirations that fell to earth and boastful predictions that didn’t come true.

All presidents have plans that don’t work out. But many of Obama’s off-the-mark quotes echo because — as a president with a short history in Washington and no previous executive experience — he faced an especially jarring collision between his confident assumptions about how he would govern and the reality of what was possible.

Here are some highlights of the list.

1. “Washington is broken. My whole campaign has been premised from the start on the idea that we have to fundamentally change how Washington works.”

Partisanship across the country has risen to record highs under Obama, according to a Pew Research Center poll.

Politico writes about Obama’s claim:

There is little doubt that Obama was sincere in his belief that Washington is driven by irrational partisanship. He was sincere also in believing that the power of his own cool and cerebral example would help drain the capital of malice and rebuild a rational center.

In retrospect, Obama’s exaggerated belief in his own capacity to transform Washington — not to mention his own wavering self-discipline in resisting nakedly partisan politics — looks like his most naïve miscalculation about his own power.

2. “I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m gonna think I’m a better political director than my political director.”

Politico:

Obama biographers and even friends have noted his tendency from a young age to sometimes to let self-confidence curdle into excessive self-regard — a trait he will try to suppress in Denver.

But the main problem with Obama’s quote was not that it was immodest but that it was inaccurate.

Obama has not presided over an especially skilled political operation. Relations with key members of Congress and with key political figures in states have been frayed, driven by complaints that Obama does not do enough outreach and political fence-tending.

3. “If I don’t have this done in three years, then there’s going to be a one-term proposition.”

Politico continues:

Christina Romer, then the West Wing’s economist, forecast in January 2009 that the unemployment rate would be around 5.5 percent by the third quarter of 2012 if a large stimulus package passed. It is currently 8.1 percent. Former budget director Peter Orszag explained after leaving office that economic models led the administration to expect that the economy would look like a “V” — a steep decline followed by a steep rebound — and instead it was more like an “L,” a sharp drop followed by a long period of flat growth.

Politico attributes Obama’s overstatement to his lack of superhuman powers:

If Obama had seen the future, he would have sought to shape public expectations, and might even have delayed expensive and arguably growth-slowing measures like his overhaul of health care in favor of more measures to coax job creation.

To read the full list, head to Politico.

David H. Mann’s work focuses on “the areas of clean technology, energy and environmental policy, and transportation as well as federal funding and appropriations,” putting his work squarely in the middle of the green energy businesses championed, mandated, and subsidized by Democrats and the Obama administration.

The Obama administration, which has a well-known affection for green energy, has granted Mann significant access: He met with White House officials four times in under two years between 2010 and 2012, records show. He has donated $500 to Priorities USA, the Obama-affiliated super PAC.

His lobbying ended up costing Americans millions of dollars, however.

Mann lobbied for Solyndra, Inc. from October 2008 to March 2009, when the company secured a $535 million loan from the Department of Energy despite the company’s mediocre credit rating. With this loan, Solyndra became “the first company to receive an offer for a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) loan guarantee under Title XVII of the Energy Policy Act of 2005,” the company announced on its website.

In early 2011, with Solyndra’s finances still shaky, the Department of Energy refinanced its loan, giving the troubled solar panel company more time to repay its debt. But, later that year, Solyndra filed for bankruptcy anyway.

As a result, the government lost over $500 million.

Solyndra is the most prominent of Mann’s failed clients, but it is far from the only one.

Mann lobbied for Advanced Electron Beams between January 2010 and January 2011. This company was a “maker of electron emitter equipment for sterilization of packaging and other applications, which aim to use less energy and other resources than conventional approaches,” according to the Boston Business Journal.

Advanced Electron Beams secured a nearly $300,000 grant from the Department of Energy in May of 2010, just four months after Mann started lobbying for the company. The grant was for research into the application of electron beams into fighting air pollution.

Two years after receiving the government research grant, AEB shut down operations. A board member said the “technology just proved to be too difficult to commercialize.”

AEB was no longer a client of Mann’s when it closed its doors.

Other companies for whom Mann has lobbied have failed to live up to their projected results.

One example is Sapphire energy, a Mann client since July 2010. Sapphire has secured over $100 million of grants and loans from the federal government since 2009 for a biofuel refinery plant in New Mexico. In a release, Democratic Governor Bill Richardson said the project would “create 750 direct and indirect jobs.”

Actual results: As of March 31, 2012, the project was less than 50 percent complete and had created fewer than 150 jobs.

Mann has also lobbied for Kemet Electronics Corporation since December 2011. In early 2010, Kemet secured a $15 million grant from the Department of Energy to make DC bus electric capacitors.

As of June 30, fewer than 5 jobs had been created at Kemet.

Alexandra Gallardo Rooker, a big wig in the California Democratic party, said that the California delegate who compared Paul Ryan to Nazi Joseph Goebbels “doesn’t go far enough” …

Previously, a South Carolina Democrat compared Gov. Nikki Haley to Hitler’s mistress, Eva Braun, a top Democratic delegate from Kansas compared Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan to Hitler, and a Democratic delegate from California compared Ryan to Nazi Joseph Goebbels.