A House Energy and Commerce subcommittee this afternoon passed the "No More Solyndras Act" that culminates the panel's 17-month-long investigation into the failed California solar energy firm and the Department of Energy loan guarantee program that supported it.

The bill was voted out of the Energy and Power Subcommittee, 14-6. Committee officials said the measure, which has no chance of passing in the Democratic-controlled Senate, would be "on the fast track" for a full committee vote, suggesting it could go to the panel as soon as next week.

Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-Calif.) was the only lawmaker to cross the aisle for the vote, joining Democrats in opposing the measure.

Bilbray is among the few vulnerable Republicans on the powerful panel, and he represents a swing district that is fairly liberal on energy and environmental issues. The nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report rates his race a tossup.

In his comments today, Bilbray went out of his way to defend Energy Secretary Steven Chu, who some Republicans say should resign over the Solyndra debacle.

"I think Chu is the right guy at the right time," Bilbray said. "I hope to God that both sides are able to allow somebody like a physicist to finally get our energy policy toward energy and not toward politics."

Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), the former Energy and Commerce chairman who helped create the loan program through his work on the 2005 Energy Policy Act, joined the rest of his Republican colleagues in voting for the bill.

But Barton, who during debate on the legislation expressed reservations about ending the loans, joined Democrats on a amendment that sought to strike a provision that sets a cutoff date for new loan applications for the Section 1703 program.

The 1703 program, which was designed to support clean energy projects, is the one loan guarantee program over which DOE still has authority; it has $34 billion in loan authority. Solyndra received its loan under the much more generous Section 1705 program, which ended last fall and was specifically for renewable energy projects.

The Democratic amendment that Barton supported failed. But ranking member Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), the amendment sponsor, used every opportunity to highlight what he said was a clear hypocrisy when it came to the cutoff date.

Republicans have consistently described the No More Solyndras Act as a way to end the controversial DOE loan guarantee program that awarded $535 million to the now-bankrupt Solyndra. Along with setting a cutoff date on applications for new loans, the bill would also place greater reporting requirements on DOE for existing loans and disallow the controversial practice of loan subordination when managing struggling loans. An amendment included in the bill also reiterates administrative penalties for violations of the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

But the cutoff date in the bill would actually allow DOE to continue to issue new loans as long as the project application was submitted to DOE before Dec. 31, 2011.

DOE hasn't released a list of projects whose applications were in before Dec. 31, but the executive director of the loan program told lawmakers in early April that "more than three dozen" projects that had applied for loan guarantees under the 1705 program were eligible at that point to reapply under the 1703 program.

Waxman said the number of projects that got their applications into the 1703 program before Dec. 31 was closer to 50.

"Under this bill, DOE could, for example, issue a new loan guarantee in 2015, 2020 or 2030" as long as the project was one of those 50, Waxman said.

"Let's be clear; this Republican bill does not terminate the loan guarantee program," he said. "The American people are entitled to an honest debate about the purpose and effect of this bill."

Waxman said Republicans, who have criticized the Obama administration for "picking winners and losers" with its energy policy, are creating their own "winners list" with the No More Solyndras bill.

"This ensures that DOE uses its remaining funds to provide loan guarantees only to the list they already have," Waxman said.

Subcommittee 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 contracts.

According to the DOE Loan Office Web page, the department has only entered into conditional commitments with two applicants. Those projects are both nuclear projects.

Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), a critic of nuclear energy, has charged that Republicans picked the Dec. 31, 2011, cutoff date in an effort to protect the nuclear industry (E&E Daily, July 11).

Markey said the nuclear industry has about 20 loan applications that were submitted before the GOP-selected cutoff date.

Whitfield disputed that number today and countered that at least 17 solar projects also sent applications before Dec. 31. He also said that six other pre-Dec. 31 applications were for biofuel projects, three were for geothermal projects, three were for wind projects and three were for energy efficiency projects.

A DOE spokesman today declined to release a list of loan applicants by energy type.

After the markup, Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.) accused Waxman 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."

This afternoon, the lead trade group for the solar industry released a statement panning the move by the subcommittee.

"Both Congress and the administration have identified ways to improve the Department of Energy Loan Guarantee Program," Solar Energy Industries Association President Rhone Resch said. "Unfortunately, the provisions approved by the subcommittee today simply 'throws the baby out with the bathwater.' ... The provision in the discussion draft that sunsets DOE's loan program would hinder our nation's ability to develop innovative energy infrastructure projects."