Sore 'losers'

After all the Republican complaints last year about the Obama administration's loan to Tesla Motors, I was eager to hear how GOP officials would respond to the news that the auto manufacturer is paying off its taxpayer loans nine years earlier than expected.

Alas, they're not responding well.

"When they're picking all these losers, it's nice for them to have one where they can point to," Representative Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican who held a hearing last month on Fisker's loan, said in an interview yesterday.

There are two broad problems with this approach -- one political and one substantive.

On the former, as Markos noted yesterday, it is a bit unseemly to see an elected member of Congress root against a loan program that benefits American companies. There's nothing wrong with cheering some good news, even if you predicted bad news.

On the latter, Rep. Jordan makes it sound as if the Department of Energy's clean-energy loan program has generally been a failure, and isolated success stories don't change that. Except, that's backwards -- the program has generally done quite well, and isolated failures don't change that. As the New York Timesreported yesterday

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"Today's repayment is the latest indication that the Energy Department's portfolio of more than 30 loans is delivering big results for the American economy while costing far less than anticipated," Ernest Moniz, the energy secretary, said in a statement. [...]

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"Tesla is arguably making the most exciting car in the world today," said [Greg Kats, president of Capital-E, a firm that invests in clean-energy companies], who worked in the Energy Department during the Clinton administration. "This loan program has exceeded expectations."

Fortune's Dan Primack added that there is "now a very real chance" that the Department of Energy loan program "will end up in the black."

Anything to add, Congressman Jordan?