A senior Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee today is bypassing his Republican colleagues to appeal directly to a slew of conservative groups that are backing the GOP's "No More Solyndras Act" that will be marked up this week.

In letters to eight conservative groups today, Rep. Ed Markey (Mass.) said that Republicans on the panel are misrepresenting what the bill will and won't do when it comes to the Department of Energy loan guarantee program that funded Solyndra, the California solar manufacturer that went bankrupt last fall after burning through most of its $535 federal loan guarantee.

Panel Republicans have described H.R. 6213 as a way to end a flawed program in the wake of their nearly 18-month-long investigation into the company, DOE loan management practices and the Obama administration officials who called the shots on the Solyndra deal.

Along with placing a greater reporting requirement on DOE for existing loans and disallowing the controversial practice of loan subordination when managing struggling loans, the bill would also set a cutoff date on applications for new loans. The provision would ensure no application received after Dec. 31, 2011, would be considered for a loan under the DOE's Section 1703 loan program, which still has $34 billion worth of loan authority under current law.

DOE hasn't released a list of projects whose applications were submitted before Dec. 31, but citing "information provided by DOE," Markey says the agency is performing due diligence on 48 applications whose combined loan request is worth more than $62 billion. Markey said that list includes $38 billion worth of nuclear loan guarantee applications, $11 billion in fossil energy applications and $10 billion in renewable energy applications.

Markey, a vocal opponent of nuclear energy, also says DOE has entered into official conditional commitments with two applicants, both nuclear projects.

"Nothing in the 'No More Solyndras Act' would preclude the DOE from awarding any of these pending applications," Markey said.

During the bill's markup in the Subcommittee on Energy and Power last week, panel Chairman Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.) said the cutoff date was included in the bill to protect the government from any liability for projects on which federal officials may have already entered legal contracts.

But in his letters today, Markey says the bill "is so broadly drafted that even those applications received by December 31, 2011, that have not entered due diligence but have also not been rejected or withdrawn would still be eligible to receive loan guarantees in the future."

Markey said he would encourage the groups, which include the Heritage Foundation, Americans for Tax Reform, Americans for Prosperity and the American Conservative Union, to further examine the bill to determine "whether the legislation actually lives up to either its name or its stated goal."

He also said that several Democratic amendments, including several of his own rejected amendments aimed at cutting the legs out from DOE's nuclear loan conditional commitments, would go further in reining in the loan program than the underlying bill.

After last week's subcommittee markup, Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.) accused Democrats of playing politics for criticizing the way Republicans are trying to wind down the loan program.

"I listen to the other side make the case that we're not ending it fast enough for them," Pompeo said. "The hypocrisy is outrageous. They don't want to end it any faster; they want to continue it."

Pompeo, who has been an open critic of a host of government energy funding initiatives, said that he'd love to see the 1703 program end immediately but that the No More Solyndras Act is a big step in the right direction.

"We are now going to put a termination to anybody entering this program," he said. "That's a big step. I'm thrilled with that."

Click here to read the letter to the Heritage Foundation.