Panel: Green jobs company endorsed by Obama and Biden squandered $535 million in stimulus money

Kaiser flatly denied he had anything to do with the loan guarantee when he was asked by the Journal, but Page nonetheless sees cronyism in the loan guarantee because personal involvement of the president and vice president in the project.

“This seems like a quid pro quo, and it raises a lot of questions,” Page said.

Other stimulus critics say Solyndra shows just how flawed the program has been from the beginning and how it has failed to create jobs and needs further oversight.

“It would have been a lot more effective to put money into the hands of the private sector,” said Alex Cortes, chairman of the Restore the Dream Foundation and DefundIt.org. “This is just another example of the failure of the stimulus.”

Solyndra is just the tip of the iceberg, according to Cortes, who plans to raise awareness of other stimulus pork projects such as an approximately $800,000 television ad campaign in New York aimed at promoting healthy eating habits.

“While that’s all well and good … it doesn’t do anything to create jobs,” Cortes said.

And Mattie Corrao, government affairs manager with Americans for Tax Reform, said the Solyndra loan shows how hollow Obama’s promise to keep close track over how stimulus money has been spent has been.

“[The administration] is trying to pretend we’re creating jobs and hoping the taxpayers are dumb enough and blind enough to believe the lie,” Corrao said. “But after two years of unemployment about 9 percent, people aren’t going to believe it anymore.”

Solyndra did not respond to a request for comments.

*Correction: The sentence originally stated the money was squandered.

**Correction: The article originally stated the postponement cost $390.5 million, instead of put the taxpayers on the hook for $390.5 million.