There's ample evidence that pretty much everyone in Congress — even vocal critics of the government’s investment in Solyndra — is into loan guarantees for energy, whatever they tell the cameras after a few of these relatively risky ventures inevitably fail. Rep. John Boehner, for instance, requested loans to enrich uranium under the same loan guarantee program that governed Solyndra, and Rep. Fred Upton requested loans to finance four other clean energy programs.
Republicans … have said the failure of Solyndra, which filed for bankruptcy after receiving $535 million in federal loan guarantees, shows President Barack Obama was wrong to pick “winners and losers” among wind- and solar-power companies.
The letters promoting coal projects show Republicans don’t mind the government picking winners if it’s for projects they want, said Jack Spencer, an energy analyst at the Washington-based Heritage Foundation.
You know the GOP's opportunism has reached a new nadir when even the arch-conservative Heritage Foundation is kicking sand at it.
The point of government-funded technology efforts is to take risks that the private sector won't, in order to create foundational new technologies that the private sector can then commercialize. Republicans realize that when they want money for their pet projects, apparently. They just conveniently forget it when they want political capital.
Le sigh.
