House Energy and Commerce Chairman Emeritus Joe Barton (R-Texas) has low expectations when it comes to the impending release of a report on the Department of Energy's troubled loan program that the White House called for at the height of the Solyndra scandal last fall.

"I would say it's possible that it won't be just window dressing but a whitewash," Barton said of the report, which former Treasury official Herb Allison conducted and delivered to the White House last week.

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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.

"I don't personally expect to get much out of it. I hope I'm surprised. I hope they actually do a thorough review and provide some transparency to what's going on, but I don't have a high degree of faith that that's what's going to happen," the congressman said in a brief interview on Capitol Hill yesterday. He acknowledged that he has not yet seen or been briefed on the findings of Allison's review.

White House officials said the report would be made public this week (E&E Daily, Feb. 8). It is supposed to present recommendations for enhanced monitoring of the loan program and a plan for establishing an early-warning system to identify troubled loans before they go the way of Solyndra.

Since the Allison review was announced, one loan recipient, the energy storage company Beacon Power Corp., has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and the parent company of another loan recipient, EnerDel, has also gone under. The government is not expected to lose anywhere near as much on its investments in those companies as it will when the Solyndra bankruptcy is finalized. Most insiders aren't optimistic that the government will be able to recoup any of the more-than-half-billion-dollar loan guarantee funding it provided to Solyndra.

Meanwhile, Fisker Automotive Inc., a company that received a DOE loan to develop advanced vehicles, has recently laid off workers after DOE began withholding loans as that company has struggled to meet production deadlines (Greenwire, Feb. 7).

Barton said he will be interested to see how much blame Allison lays at the feet of Energy Secretary Steven Chu and DOE in the review. Barton has previously said he believes Chu could become the "fall guy" for Solyndra as the White House seeks to distance itself from the company that had links to some of President Obama's biggest campaign donors and campaign fundraisers.

An ongoing Energy and Commerce Committee investigation has unearthed plenty of embarrassing emails about how the administration handled the media firestorm over the decline and fall of Solyndra, but it has yet to reveal any direct link between Obama and the decision to approve a loan for a company.

Administration officials have repeatedly argued that the loan decision was made by career staffers at DOE on its merits and that the Solyndra loan was simply an investment in a promising new clean energy technology that unfortunately did not pan out.

Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), who is leading the Energy and Commerce Solyndra probe, has been highly critical of the Obama administration's response to a subpoena request for internal White House documents relating to Solyndra.

Last week, Stearns said he was considering pursuing a contempt of Congress charge against the White House because of the lack of response his subcommittee has received. Stearns said this week that he will likely give the White House one more chance to comply before pursuing that option.

Barton said yesterday that Republicans on the Energy and Commerce Committee have "negotiated in good faith with the White House, and they do as little as possible as long as possible and then proclaim how cooperative they are."

Barton said he believes there are thousands of pages of emails, transcripts and phone conversation logs that relate to Solyndra that the White House continues to sit on.

"This White House has said if they ask for it, don't send it until you absolutely have to," he said. "They think maybe we'll lose interest, perhaps, which is wrong. Or that we're not serious, which is wrong."

White House spokesman Eric Schultz declined today to say exactly when the Allison report will be made public, but Obama administration officials have developed a habit when it comes to Solyndra-related material of releasing documents late Friday afternoons.

"We are now approaching the one-year mark of this Congressional investigation and everything disclosed in the 187,000 pages of documents, nine committee staff briefings, five Congressional hearings, 72,000 pages from Solyndra investors, and Committee interview with [Obama donor and Solyndra booster] George Kaiser, affirms what we said since day one: this was a merit based decision made by the Department of Energy," Schultz said in an email today. "At last month's House Republican retreat, the Leadership increased pressure on its members to ratchet-up oversight of the Obama Administration for political reasons. We believe political motivations shouldn't drive this investigation."