After coming under fire less than a year ago for organizational gridlock and lengthy review periods, the Department of Energy's loan guarantee program now has the opposite problem.

Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee said today that they are worried that the spectacular failure of the Solyndra solar energy company, which received more than half a billion dollars in federal loans before going bankrupt, is a sign that DOE is rushing its loan guarantees out the door.

And with some $9 billion in conditional commitments for 14 projects under the controversial loan program set to be finalized before the end of the month, Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and two of his top deputies on the committee want to know how the Department of Energy plans to complete those projects without further loss of taxpayer money.

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.

"With so much of DOE's Section 1705 Loan Guarantee portfolio not yet finalized, and the September 30, 2011 stimulus deadline to close these guarantees just days away, we are concerned that another rush to meet stimulus deadlines will result in DOE closing these deals before they are ready," Upton and Reps. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) and Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.) wrote in a letter today to Energy Secretary Steven Chu.

The committee members want to know if DOE can ask for more time to finalize its loan guarantee commitments -- 10 of which were made in June of this year or later -- and also asked for a status report of every loan that has been finalized or committed to under the Section 1705 program.

"We are committed to ensuring that every deal closed before September 30 is fully vetted and will not close any deal that has not received full due diligence by September 30," DOE spokesman Damien LaVera said today. "We are not rushing to complete deals; we are using the full amount of time Congress allocated for the program so we can ensure that we fully complete all due diligence and make informed decisions based on the most recent data."

LaVera added that every agreement in DOE's portfolio has undergone "many months of extensive review and evaluation before a conditional commitment is signed" and that, back in May, the agency suspended applications for projects that it determined were unlikely to be completed by Sept. 30.

"This allowed us to dedicate our full attention to the review and analysis required to fully vet each of these deals," he said.

But Stearns isn't so sure.

"If the administration was so wrong about Solyndra after what DOE and OMB officials claim were at least nine months of due diligence, how can these agencies possibly exercise the proper controls when trying to rush out nearly $9 billion before the September 30th deadline," Stearns said in a separate statement today.

Since Solyndra shuttered its doors late last month, Republicans have sought to make the company the poster child of President Obama's stimulus effort. The program was originally created to back investments for renewable energy projects that might otherwise not get private funding. But Stearns and Republicans have called the program a waste of taxpayer money and point to Solyndra as validation that government should not be picking winners and losers by backing companies with huge federal-funded loans.

Sen. John Barasso (R-Wyo.) sought to put that waste in perspective today in a chart he circulated to Senate Republicans that shows the $535 million that DOE authorized for Solyndra's loan was more than what 35 states received through the stimulus for funding of highways, roads and bridge projects.