In the fifth hearing in as many months on the Solyndra loan guarantee debacle, Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee continued to insist today that Energy Secretary Steven Chu answer questions before Congress.

It appears they may get their wish at last.

Sources familiar with the investigation said this afternoon that the Department of Energy has offered Nov. 1 or Nov. 2 as potential days for Chu to testify before the committee.

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.

A spokesman for the committee did not return a request for comment on the offer.

Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), the chairman of the investigations subcommittee that is taking a lead on the Solyndra matter, has promised to bring Chu before the panel to answer questions, and committee Democrats have agreed that the secretary should have the chance to defend himself from attacks that have been leveled over Solyndra.

But in recent weeks, Stearns has seemed to be in less of a rush than his GOP colleagues to make that happen. In an interview last week, Stearns said that Chu's appearance would happen sometime before Christmas.

In his opening statement today, Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) said the investigation "will continue until taxpayers get the answers they deserve, regardless of how high in this administration the facts take us."

But at least one Republican said today that he has "no ax to grind" with Chu.

"I want it on the record that I think finally we have a Secretary of Energy that is a scientist, a physicist, not a political operative," said Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-Calif.) "And so this member's intentions are to get to the facts and find out how this could happen, especially when you have somebody like Secretary Chu running a department."

So as the investigation runs its course, "I hope to God that this does not cause [Chu] to have to do what [former loan program director Jonathan] Silver did, and that is basically step aside and step out," Bilbray said.

But as the committee awaits Chu's testimony, Stearns has had little trouble finding ways to fill his subcommittee's hearing docket.

This morning, Stearns called a pair of Treasury Department officials to highlight that agency's concerns with a loan restructuring earlier this year that subordinated the federal government's investment in Solyndra behind new money being put in by private investors. One of the main arguments of the Solyndra case that Republicans have built is that that loan subordination was not only financially unwise but in violation of an explicit clause in the 2005 Energy Policy Act (Greenwire, Oct. 14).

In the run-up to today's hearing, Stearns denied a request by Democrats to allow a DOE official to appear to respond to the concerns raised by Treasury Department officials. The move led Democrats to charge that Stearns was more concerned with making headlines than having a fair hearing.

Ranking member Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) also effectively hijacked the first half of today's hearing, which was supposed to focus on Treasury's concerns, by blasting Stearns for suppressing a Feb. 15 memo in which a DOE loan office counsel lays out the agency's legal justification for going ahead with the loan subordination.

But a Republican committee staffer charged that it was Democrats who were more concerned with making headlines than conducting rigorous investigation. After Democrats spent the better part of two hours expressing outrage over Stearns' refusal to release the memo, the staffer showed the press several internal committee emails that showed Republican staff had promised to review the DOE legal memo at an upcoming hearing.

'There is no criminal behavior ... just dumbness'

The memo, which overshadowed the testimony of the two Treasury officials this morning, was eventually entered into the record and released by the committee just after noon today.

The six-page document by a DOE official argues that the federal statute prohibiting loan subordination only applies at the original issuance of the loan guarantee and that the Energy secretary can subordinate the loan in a later restructuring if, in his view, doing so gives the government the best chance of being repaid.

In the end, the extra money that Solyndra received from private investors through the restructuring was not enough to save the company, and the DOE bet didn't pay off.

But Democrats argued today that bad financial judgment is far different from illegal activity.

Or, as Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) put it, "there is no criminal behavior. ... There is just dumbness."

That assessment did not sit well with Republican members of the committee who argued that the opinion of one legal counsel isn't justification enough to ignore a specific statute of the 2005 Energy Policy Act that prohibits loan subordination.

"You can't ignore the law. The law is very clear," Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) said today.

Scalise questioned whether loan office counsel Susan Richardson came up with her opinion to provide cover for the administration.

"We've got memos from the White House saying, 'Get this thing done, we want the vice president to be involved in the ribbon cutting,'" Scalise said. "They were concerned about a photo op, and so in order to do that, they allowed $535 million of taxpayer money to be put in the back of the line to some private venture capital firm based on a phony legal memo."