After the Obama campaign jumped on a press report yesterday that Senate Energy and Natural Resources ranking member Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) was breaking ranks with her party and its presumptive presidential nominee over Solyndra, the senator's office today released a statement that sought to clarify her position.

A report in the Hill yesterday said Murkowski warned against a "knee-jerk" response to the failed solar energy company and opposed shutting down the Department of Energy loan program that provided Solyndra with its $535 million loan guarantee.

"I do believe there is a role, and perhaps that sets me apart from some of my other colleagues on Capitol Hill," Murkowski said, according to the story. "We are focusing right now on the failures instead of also recognizing that we have done good things for the loan guarantee program."

Expected GOP White House nominee Mitt Romney and outside conservative groups have held up Solyndra as an example of a failed effort by the Obama administration to pick winners and losers in the green energy sector. Romney made a surprise visit to Solyndra's headquarters in California last week to blast Obama while standing on a street outside the shuttered facility.

An Obama spokesman called the statement a "Murkowski smackdown," and Democrats drew parallels to Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker breaking with the Obama camp on campaign ads attacking Romney's work at Bain Capital.

But today Murkowski's office sent out a release stating that she was firm in her belief that the loan guarantee program needed reform during her remarks yesterday at an energy forum sponsored by George Washington University and the law firm Arent Fox.

The release said Murkowski "made clear in her remarks, and in comments to reporters after the speech," that there was a difference between the 1703 loan program, which was created by the Energy Policy Act of 2005, and the 1705 loan program, which was created in 2009, was funded by the government stimulus and offered more generous loan terms than the original program.

The 1705 program, under which Solyndra received its loan guarantee, "was a hijacking of -- and should not be confused with -- the original loan guarantee program," the release stated. "Sen. Murkowski has repeatedly called for an investigation of the loan guarantee program, and has consistently observed that significant reforms must to be made in order for a loan guarantee program to continue in any form."

DOE's authority for issuing new loans under the 1705 program expired last fall, but the agency still has funding available and authority to grant new loans under the 1703 program.

Today's Murkowski release also pointed to press statements dating back to September, when the Alaskan began calling for a Senate hearing on DOE's loan programs.