Solar company Solyndra became yet another example of the Obama Administration’s reckless and ineffective overspending when it filed for bankruptcy early last month.  In the spring of last year, the President touted the startup company as a success story of his nearly $1 trillion first stimulus bill.  That optimism has since faded into financial doom.

We need smart, cost-effective investments that promote better energy policy, not blind faith in unproven energy companies.  The President’s first stimulus chose the latter, and according to The Washington Post, the $38.6 billion that was allocated for green energy and tens of thousands of new jobs has yielded only a disappointing fraction.  Solyndra’s collapse alone put 1,100 employees out of work.

The White House still defends the $535 million loan guarantee of taxpayer money to Solyndra as a necessary gamble – in the name of making America a global competitor in green energy.  As President Obama recently explained to reporters, “There were going to be some companies that did not work out.  Solyndra was one of them.”

                         Dismissed Warnings

The argument that Solyndra is nothing more than a bad bet, however, does not excuse or obscure the painful fact that millions of dollars were wasted because of ill-guided government decisions. 

We now know that the solar manufacturer’s loans were rushed and that the White House was aware of its financial troubles.  We also know that these concerns were largely dismissed and that the Energy Department was poised to grant even more taxpayer money to the flailing company last year.  Now congressional and criminal investigations are underway to determine whether Solyndra got special treatment because of its investors’ political connections. 

                         The ‘Solyndra Economy’

The Solyndra downfall and absence of government foresight paint an acute illustration of the pitfalls of politically-motivated investment and the price of agenda-setting overreach.  The Wall Street Journal appropriately calls it the “Solyndra Economy.”  Simply put, the “Solyndra Economy” is based on the idea that government – not private competition – picks the market’s winners and losers.  If government bureaucrats choose unwisely, as they did with Solyndra, taxpayers are left to foot the bill. 

Americans should not have to watch their hard-earned tax dollars misused on high-risk government ventures and deficit spending.  The bankruptcy of Solyndra on the taxpayer dime is proof that economist Milton Friedman was right:  “Very few people spend other people’s money as carefully as they spend their own.”  The capital lost in this government fallout is ultimately capital denied to potentially successful projects in the private sector. 

                         A Better Energy Policy

The job-creating capacity of our domestic energy producers offers a much better approach.  We can create more than a million new jobs by lifting the current de facto moratorium on domestic energy production and by speeding up the process for drilling permits.  According to a report this summer, quicker permits in the Gulf would add more than $40 billion to the national economy.  It is a solution that focuses on getting Americans back to work – not carelessly spending their money.

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