White House official stays mum on Solyndra subpoena compliance

White House senior adviser David Plouffe on Sunday would not say whether the White House will comply with an upcoming subpoena for internal communications on the $535 million federal loan guarantee to the solar company Solyndra.

“I am not going to comment on a subpoena if it has not been issued,” Plouffe said on NBC’s Meet the Press.

House Energy and Commerce Committee Republicans will likely vote Thursday to subpoena the internal White House documents, which the White House has refused to provide thus far.

Plouffe defended White House cooperation with the GOP’s Solyndra probe, noting reams of other documents produced. 

The solar company, which received its Energy Department loan guarantee in 2009, went bankrupt in early September.

The administration says it has provided over 70,000 pages of documents from the Energy and Treasury Departments, the White House Office of Management and Budget, and communications between the White House and Solyndra (and its representatives).

The White House on Friday announced it had ordered an independent review of the Energy Department’s green energy loan portfolio by a former Treasury Department official.

Plouffe touted that review while also defending the Obama administration’s green energy efforts.

“We take very seriously the fact that one of these loans did not work,” Plouffe said.

“Protecting taxpayers is critically important but we also have to keep our eye on the ball. If we are going to have the kind of jobs where people can make $20, $22, $25 an hour in high-tech manufacturing around this country, which we have to have, we have got to make progress in the clean energy sector,” he said.

The loan guarantee program was first authorized in a 2005 energy bill crafted under GOP control of Congress and signed into law by then-President Bush, and expanded under President Obama’s stimulus law.

The first loan guarantees were issued under the Obama administration, but Plouffe noted that Republican members of Congress have pushed for loans guarantees for projects in their states.

He also said that green energy loan financing decisions have “absolutely not” been gift to campaign donors, noting decisions are made on the merits by career Energy Department officials.

“If we don’t win the clean energy race in terms of technology innovation and jobs, and cede it to other countries, we are not going to have the century we need,” Plouffe said.