Congressional Appropriations committees seen extending DOE loan program

As reported by Ari Natter in Bloomberg Politics:

Lawmakers have agreed, however, to continue a separate Obama-era loan program the Trump administration has sought to kill, the chairman, Representative Mike Simpson, said in an interview Tuesday after his appropriations subcommittee finished work on the bill.

...The Energy Department loan program, which has issued $465 million to automaker Tesla Inc. and provided $1.6 billion in loan guarantees for NRG Energy Inc.’s Ivanpah solar plant in Southern California, has been targeted for elimination by the administration for two years in a row. The program has been under fire from conservative critics since it famously backed a half-billion-dollar loan guarantee to failed solar-panel maker Solyndra LLC.

Although the Trump administration supposedly wants the DOE loan guarantee program ended, that didn't stop it from rushing through a $3.7 billion nuclear loan guarantee to prop up the failing Vogtle 3 & 4 new reactor construction project in Georgia, just a few months ago.

That was on top of a $8.3 billion nuclear loan guarantee awarded by President Obama's Energy Secretary, Ernest Moniz, in 2014, for a total of $12 billion in nuclear loan guarantee U.S. taxpayer funding at very high risk. This is 22 times the amount lost to U.S. taxpayers in the Solyndra solar default.

Several weeks ago, Moniz joined the board of Southern Nuclear, the builder of Vogtle 3 & 4. The unethical revolving door between government and industry reeks to high heaven.