Congressional Republicans were quick to point fingers yesterday in the wake of a news report that old news releases from the embattled Department of Energy loan guarantee program were being altered online.

CNBC broke the story that two loan program news releases issued earlier this year had been changed to replace the name of SunPower, a solar power company that has recently earned unfavorable media attention over its financial health, with the name of another solar company.

An April 12 news release issued by the office announced a $1.2 billion loan guarantee conditional commitment for the California Valley Solar Ranch project, which the office said was "sponsored by SunPower Corporation."

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But a more recent version of the release, which was still dated April 12, said the project was "sponsored by NRG Energy."

While SunPower did apply for the loan guarantee, NRG later bought the California Valley Solar Ranch project and is responsible for paying back the loan.

DOE spokesman Damien LaVera said yesterday evening that the changes that CNBC discovered were the result of support service contractors who inadvertently made the change as they were updating a project fact sheet to reflect the current ownership of the California Valley Solar Ranch project.

"Those contractors inadvertently changed the news bulletins posted on the [loan program office] website" but the change was not made on the website that DOE maintains, LaVera said.

"Once the staff became aware of the error, they corrected it on the loan programs website, restoring the original version with a note clarifying the error," he said.

The note reads that "while updating the California Valley Solar Ranch Project page to reflect the change of sponsorship from SunPower Corporation to NRG Energy, the press release announcing the transaction was also inadvertently changed. This press release has been updated to reflect its original status."

But Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has been looking into the loan guarantee program as part of its ongoing investigation into DOE's half-billion-dollar loan to the solar firm Solyndra, which declared bankruptcy last month, quickly rushed out a release yesterday evening suggesting that DOE might be tampering with its investigation.

The report raises "alarming questions as Congressional investigators are still collecting documents related to the Solyndra investigation," the Energy and Commerce Committee release stated. "What other information has DOE tampered with related to SunPower or, for that matter, Solyndra and the overall loan guarantee program?"

The National Republican Congressional Committee issued its own release following the report that suggested that the Obama administration was attempting to protect Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) by whitewashing the loan program page. Miller is a senior Democrat who supported the SunPower project and whose son is connected to a firm that lobbied on behalf of SunPower.

But Miller is not the only Democrat the NRCC is targeting with attacks about DOE's much-maligned loan program.

This week, the committee is on the air in Rep. John Garamendi's (D-Calif.) newly drawn district with a commercial tying him to Solyndra and the Obama administration's larger stimulus effort.

That effort on the campaign front comes as Republicans on Capitol Hill continue to try to make Solyndra synonymous with government waste.

In a floor speech yesterday Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) called for a "Solyndra rule" that would provide better scrutiny of new spending to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse.

"As we wrestle with how to bring spending under control, we've got to quit using excuses. Every program has to be rigorously analyzed. If there's waste, fraud, abuse it has to be scrutinized," he said.

Reporter Jason Plautz contributed.