The anti-loan guarantee legislation that cleared a House subcommittee yesterday still leaves USEC eligible for a Department of Energy loan guarantee despite efforts by Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) to target the company’s enrichment plant. Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.), chairman for the House Energy and Commerce Energy and Power subcommittee, said the legislation that passed the panel on a largely party-line vote yesterday would still allow USEC to obtain a $2 billion loan guarantee for the American Centrifuge Project. That’s because the “No More Solyndras Act,” which the panel is pushing following an investigation into DOE’s loan guarantee to the now-bankrupt solar panel company, would only bar granting the loans to applications submitted after the end of 2011. USEC has been pursuing a loan guarantee since 2009.
Markey offered two amendments specifically aimed at USEC’s efforts, which were voted down by Republicans. One provision would rule out a loan guarantee to companies that have been warned that they risk being de-listed from a major stock exchange, which happened to USEC earlier this year. The second would not allow a loan guarantee to a company that had lost more than $535 million in the last year, which is the amount of the loan to Solyndra. USEC reported $540 million in losses in 2011. “Surely we can agree that projects or companies that have already blown their budgets and are losing money far in excess of the Solyndra loan guarantee should not get loan guarantees,” Markey said.
But Whitfield stressed that the amendments were unnecessary “micro managing” because the intent of the bill is to phase out the loan guarantee program. “I think the DOE, after all the scrutiny as a result of the Solyndra case as well as the bankruptcies of three other companies that have seen loans as well as the financial difficulty many of the recipients are having, that Congress truly would be micro managing,” Whitfield said. “Our objective here is to end the program. We want to get rid of the program.” The cutoff at the end 2011 for applications is to avoid liability issues with companies that have already applied, Whitfield said.
