The Solyndra loan debacle has already cost American taxpayers more than half-a-billion dollars, but it is about to cost them millions more. Each of the company’s 1,100 former employees will receive a package of federally funded benefits worth approximately $13,000 in Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA), increasing the Solyndra bill by $14.3 million.
TAA assists workers who have lost their jobs because of trade imbalances due to increased foreign imports or outsourcing.
The Labor Department announced the award on November 18, the day after Energy Secretary Steven Chu testified before Congress that the loan guarantee was apolitical and made entirely on the merits. Chu specifically declined to apologize for the growing scandal.
The newest payout some Republicans outraged. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-UT, said, “The failure was blamed on China, but if you cannot even out-compete U.S. companies, it wasn’t foreign competition that ruined your business; it was simply a failed business model.” Hatch’s spokeswoman Julia Lawless (whose surname best describes the Obama administration) added, “This is an embarrassment and shows that TAA is a program of questionable merit.”
Understandable as their pique is, GOP outrage should not be directed toward the little people receiving a pittance of $13,000 apiece….
Read more from Ben Johnson at The White House Watch.
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and what is the reason we are on the hook for this package to employees? Are they all now federal since we seem to lavish on them.
and here is an example of one of your programs that "don't work"….sir…waste fraud and abuse?…It is under "Obama" in the dictionary…
Another hold up from obummer.
Here we go again giving more money to Solyndra who ripped us off big time with Chu Chu leading the way for Obummer to get donations from that bundler Foster.Why do they need to be retrained they're good crooks already.
It's amazing how the lefties know which issues to stay away from. They just take their taxation lumps like the rest of us but don't dare denounce the crowned prince of corruption. They bow to him regardless and wait for whatever crums he may leave behind. What's say we start prosicuting for the obvious illegal restructuring of the loan to benifit the outside investers when the law clearly states that the taxpayers come first….IT'S A REALLY BAD JOKE, OUR GOVERNMENT….FAST AND FURIOUS FOOLISHNESS….WATCH, MY HAND NEVER LEAVES MY WRIST.
Kinda late now, but this S O B should have been impeached long ago. May America survive his reign.
Why does someone not "follow the money" and setermine how much ended up back in the reelection of the largest imposter ever elected to a national office?
I am outraged that the fraud is not impeached, but going for another term to destroy us for good….