Despite a 20,000-page document dump by the Obama administration, promises by its legal counsel of further cooperation and a last-ditch bid by Democrats to postpone the vote, House Republicans moved ahead today with a subpoena of the White House for documents related to the Solyndra scandal.

The 14-9 party-line vote by the Energy and Commerce Committee was blasted by Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), who chaired the panel for 16 years, as both unprecedented and unnecessary.

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.

During his chairmanship of the committee "I served many subpoenas on many people, but never on the White House," Dingell said. "What part of 'yes' don't you understand?"

But Chairman-emeritus Joe Barton (R-Texas) said no one has been fooled by a last-minute show of cooperation by the White House this week, eight months into the committee's Solyndra probe and a month after the committee sent its request to the White House for documents on the bankrupt solar company that received more than half-a-billion dollars of Department of Energy loans.

"We can argue over conclusions and interpretations of facts and documents, but we shouldn't argue whether the American people through this subcommittee have a right to get the documents to determine what the facts are," Barton said.

The White House attempted to head off the subpoena vote yesterday when its legal counsel met with both Democratic and Republican committee leaders and offered to provide documents if there could be some agreement that would narrow the scope of the document request.

While the administration has already provided some 80,000 pages of documents to the committee over the course of the investigation, including 900 pages of documents from the White House, Republicans say it is not up to the administration to decide which documents to provide to Congress.

Republicans have said they want every White House document related to Solyndra dating to the first day of the Obama administration and said they expect the request to include emails and documents from President Obama's personal BlackBerry.

"The White House has been clear with the Committee that we are willing to cooperate with legitimate oversight requests that are tailored to balance the important institutional interests of both branches," White House spokesman Eric Schultz said in an email today. "We are disappointed that the Committee has refused to discuss their requests with us in good faith, and has instead chosen a partisan route, proceeding with subpoenas that are unprecedented and unwarranted."

In response to repeated appeals by every Democrat on the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations to give the White House more time to provide documents that were requested at the beginning of October, subcommittee Chairman Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) said he has already been fooled once by such stalling tactics.

Over the summer, four months into the panel's Solyndra probe, the subcommittee was considering issuing a subpoena to the Office of Management and Budget when Republicans maintained the investigation was being stonewalled. After promises of cooperation, the panel held off on that vote, only to move ahead with it weeks later when the requested information still did not come.

"The administration seems to think that if they can drag this investigation out, we will just give up and go away," Stearns said today. "We do not have any faith in the White House overtures that seem to simply want to delay and obstruct."

Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.), who was authorized to craft and issue the subpoena, agreed.

"Many of the documents the administration has produced were delivered only after being compelled by a subpoena to OMB," Upton said. "Then, as now, administration lawyers feigned a limited willingness to cooperate while steadfastly refusing to actually deliver the documents needed to get to the bottom of the Solyndra affair."

Democrats express outrage

Democrats blasted the subpoena on several fronts, not the least of which was the fact that the panel did not vote on specific subpoena language this morning but rather a resolution that would give Upton the power to come up with and issue a subpoena.

"It's always been the tradition of this committee to vote on specific language of a subpoena. Suppose the chairman arbitrarily says he wants the president's personal BlackBerry," said ranking member Henry Waxman (D-Calif.). "Come in and ask us to issue a subpoena when you're ready to issue it."

Investigations Subcommittee ranking member Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) argued a subpoena that is not limited in scope could actually slow the committee's investigation into Solyndra by inundating the panel with thousands of pages of irrelevant documents.

Then there is the possibility that, with such an open-ended subpoena, the White House might assert a claim of executive privilege that would tie the investigation up in federal courts and further slow down the investigation.

DeGette said that if Republicans were more concerned with investigating Solyndra than in making political headlines, they would choose to work with the White House to avoid a subpoena.

Upton said after the hearing that he would take the White House's latest overture of cooperation and requests to limit the scope of the request into consideration as he crafts his subpoena. But he offered no specific date as to when he would formally issue the document to the White House.