Tell your Representative: Oppose "No More Solyndras" Act

The House Republican leadership plans to bring up HR 6213, the "No More Solyndras" Act, for a vote in the full House of Representatives on Friday, September 14.

The bill is purportedly a response to the bankruptcy of the solar firm Solyndra, which failed after receiving a $535 million taxpayer loan from the Department of Energy. The bill's sponsors say they want to prevent further wastes of taxpayer money.

In reality, the bill is nothing more than an effort to score cheap political points. There is ample reason for both Republicans and Democrats to oppose this bill. If the sponsors' real concern was risk of more taxpayer losses under the DOE's loan guarantee program, they could have chosen to simply end the program. But they didn't do that.

Instead, the bill only prevents DOE from approving any loan applications that were submitted after December 31, 2011.

The result is that the bill would leave intact at least $30.5 Billion in potential taxpayer loans for risky and massive nuclear power and "clean coal" projects (such as the proposed $8.3 Billion for Georgia's Vogtle reactors), and only $4.5 Billion for a handful of renewable energy projects.

In other words, the bill would more accurately be called the "More Nukes, Less Solar" Act.

Please tell your Representative to oppose the "No More Solyndras" Act below. As always, please feel free to edit the sample letter to reflect your own concerns. Please use the icons at the top right of this page to forward this page to your friends and colleagues. Note: you must have a U.S. address to participate in this action.