A commission created to cut government spending may have its sights on a recent loan to electric vehicle manufacturer Rivian.
The company, with a factory in Normal, Illinois, recently received a $6.6 billion conditional loan from the Department of Energy to restart construction of a plant in Georgia. Rivian said the Georgia plant would produce smaller, more affordable SUVs and would create over 7,000 jobs, but the company has been going through a rough stretch recently, with deliveries and production falling in both of the last two quarters.
Members of the recently created Department of Government Efficiency have mentioned they may go after the loan and others doled out by the Biden administration.
U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, said he is open to the idea of getting that loan back from Rivian.
“We take over in January and until then, the big government Democrats are still in charge and they’re spending money in our view recklessly, so yes, we’ve had a lot of discussions over the last couple of days about what our authority would be to claw some of that back and stop it,” said Johnson.
Johnson said he saw a clip of someone from the Biden administration in charge of distributing the funds say, “it’s like we’re dumping gold bars off the Titanic here at the end.”
Vivek Ramaswamy, the incoming co-chair of DOGE, said this wouldn’t fly in the private sector.
“If this was in a corporate context, that would be a fiduciary breach, and I think it is in some sense an even more sacred duty that public servants have for the taxpayer, a kind of fiduciary duty,” Ramaswamy said recently at the Aspen Security Forum.
Elon Musk, the owner of Tesla and competitor with Rivian, is also a member of the commission and is being accused of having a conflict of interest.
“Isn’t this rich. In 2009, when his Tesla operation was hanging by a thread, Elon Musk borrowed nearly $500 million from the Department of Energy, saving the company so they could put a new model of the car on showroom floors. Bottom line is Elon Musk’s record is clear, his vast business has benefited from government assistance in the past. He’s in a delicate position with many potential conflicts of interest,” said Illinois U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Springfield, in a statement.
Tesla received the loan of $465 million, but repaid the loan in full in 2013, 10 years ahead of schedule.
