House Republicans last night said that the resignation of the man who ran the Department of Energy's controversial loan guarantee program does little to solve the underlying problems that led to the now-infamous Solyndra deal and the waste of over half a billion taxpayer dollars.

And at least one GOP member on the Energy and Commerce Committee, which has been investigating the Solyndra loan for the past seven months, said last night that the departure of Jonathan Silver provides more questions than answers.

SPECIAL REPORT

Solyndra, a solar manufacturer that was given a $535 million loan guarantee and touted by the White House as a model for the clean energy economy, has filed for bankruptcy. E&E examines how it got there and what it means. Click here to read the report.

Silver is officially stepping down just under two years after being tapped as the executive director of DOE's loan program office.

Though Silver's departure caught lawmakers off guard yesterday, it was no surprise to the White House, which had been expecting and planning for Silver's departure for the past several weeks. In announcing his resignation yesterday afternoon, Energy Secretary Steven Chu framed Silver's departure as a planned transition (E&ENews PM, Oct. 6).

Silver served in the Commerce, Interior and Treasury departments before joining DOE to take over the loan program in November 2009. Under Silver, the loan program office deployed about $36 billion to support 38 different projects. Twenty-eight of those -- totaling some $16 billion -- were finalized under the terms of the section 1705 program designed to help promote renewable energy projects.

The $535 million loan guarantee to Solyndra was the first loan given out under the 1705 program, and it was finalized about two months before Silver joined DOE. But Silver was at the helm of the agency last year when DOE restructured the loan in what administration officials have said was a bid to save Solyndra and make it profitable.

Republicans are claiming that the restructuring deal was not only ill-advised from a financial perspective but also illegal.

"While Mr. Silver was not the head at the time of the original loan guarantee made to Solyndra, he was in charge when $75 million of taxpayer money was subordinated" behind money later invested by private entities, said Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.), who is a member of the Energy and Commerce investigative subcommittee that has been probing the deal.

Morgan said Silver's departure raises more questions that the committee needs to look into.

"I believe this subordination was clearly outside the authority of DOE under the law. I have little confidence that DOE was doing its due diligence with this loan guarantee program," Griffith said.

"Mr. Silver's resignation does not solve the problem," said Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) in a joint statement.

"We are in the midst of the Solyndra investigation and just days removed from Mr. Silver's mad rush to finalize the last $4.7 billion in loans" before a Sept. 30 deadline that ended the 1705 program, Upton and Stearns said. "American taxpayers are already on the hook for the half-billion-dollar Solyndra bust -- what other shoes does this Administration expect to drop?"

The offices of Energy and Commerce Committee ranking member Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Investigations Subcommittee ranking member Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) declined to comment last night on Silver stepping down.

GOP lawmakers say only the Obama admin carries the blame

Calls for Silver's resignation by House Republicans started just days after his Capitol Hill testimony last month.

At that hearing, Silver riled Republicans by trying to put at least part of the blame for Solyndra on the George W. Bush administration.

"Much of the extensive due diligence on the transaction was conducted between 2006 and the end of 2008," Silver said.

Since then, Republicans have pushed back strongly against any effort to depict the Solyndra deal as a failure of anyone but the Obama administration.

"Despite the President's claims, this failure isn't a legacy of the Bush Administration loan guarantee program," said Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.) in a statement last night. "The Solyndra swindle is a failure of the Obama Administration's economic stimulus bill," which helped fund the 1705 program.

Silver, who before his work at DOE co-founded a private venture that invested in alternative energy technologies, is joining the moderate D.C. think tank Third Way to study clean energy issues.

Third Way President Jonathan Cowan welcomed Silver to the company in a release yesterday.

Silver's "deep experience in the most senior levels of government and the private sector, and his understanding of how each operates, will help us tackle one of the most vexing problems that faces our nation: how do we to jump-start a vibrant, innovative clean energy economy in the United States given the economic challenges before us?," Cowan said.

"There is a clear need for the U.S. to engage in the emerging $2.3 trillion global clean energy market. I can think of few people better to help us think through how to do this than Jonathan," he said.