Last Friday, Solyndra’s top executives declined to answer any questions of substance before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, giving little insight into how the company managed to lose hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars. The hearing will undoubtedly disappear from the news cycle soon, and the issue itself will face a similar demise when it is no longer politically useful. These Washington media narratives may temporarily captivate the public interest, but in the process we lose sight of the bigger picture: 1,100 American workers lost their jobs when Solyndra failed. These were people who accepted positions with Solyndra under the false promise of green energy, a promise the president made to those workers the day he visited their factory last year:

“Every day that you build this expanded facility, as you fill orders for solar panels to ship around the world, you’re demonstrating that the promise of clean energy isn’t just an article of faith — not anymore. … We’re poised to transform the ways we power our homes and our cars and our businesses. And we’re poised to lead our competitors in the development of new technologies and products and businesses. And we are poised to generate countless new jobs, good-paying middle-class jobs, right here in the United States of America. That’s the promise of clean energy. And thanks to the men and women here today — and the innovators and the workers all across America — it’s a promise that we’ve already begun to fulfill.”