that, and the program officials told us that they had enough information to go forward with each of the loans. however, we also asked for documentation for a systematic way that they had made those decisions and for records of that, and they did not provide those. jenna: so did they provide any more insight as to why they were confident to give out that money? were they specific at all for the reasons even in conversation about why they thought this was a good idea without doing some of this other due diligence? it varied by loan but, yes, they had some explanations including that they had preliminary results for some of the studies that would be required. some of these studies include things like a marketing analysis or a legal analysis or a technical analysis that you would want to use to evaluate the risk of the loan as well as the timing of the loan
director of the natural resources and environment team at the government accountability office, and he was in charge of an audit of loans given out by the department of energy. your report doesn t go into specific companies, but you took a look at ten different companies getting some of these government loans. why, first of all, did you do that audit? well, the doe loan guarantee program was createed in 2005 and as part of the legislation, gao is required to report annually on the program and how it s functioning. jenna: so this is part of the annual report. you took a look at ten companies. what did you findsome. well, we looked at the ten companies at the time we reported that had received commitments for loans. and what we found is fully half of those had received those commitments before the program had completed key reports that are required by the program in order to assess the risk of the loans. jenna: why did they get the money before that was done? well, we did ask the p
president i will get up, i will go to the oval office, and i will try to make washington d.c. as inconsequential in your life as i can. reporter: the romney campaign sending out an email to reporters today encouraging them to ask this question of the texas governor, quoting, do you continue to belief that social security should not be a federal program, that it s unconstitutional and it should be returned to the states? or are you retreating from that view end quote. that may be a little bit of a prelude to the sniping we can expect between the two frontrunners in the next fox news-google debate set for next week. jenna: we ll let the campaigners ask their own questions. we ll ask our viewers question in that debate. thank you very much, doug. fox news is teaming up with google to host a gop debate in orlando next thursday night. you can submit your questions for the candidates go to foxnews.com scroll down to the spotlight section and click on the gop presidential debate. there you
gao s reports because we know how thorough you are, and i just have to ask you, frank, you ve been part of the gao for more than a decade now. have you ever seen anything like this? is this business as usual in d.c., or is there something different here? well, we review programs, and we review processes. and it s not unusual to find especially in a new program that as they are setting the program up that some of the processes are they re following we find could be improved. and we ve found this in the loan guarantee program over the years. they have implemented a number of our recommendations. however, we continue to find every time we look additional areas of concern. jenna: and we look forward to your additional audit that you re going to be doing. we belief those results at the end of this year or early next as to whether or not they followed the recommendations in your 2010 report. frank, it s really a pleasure to have you. thank you so much for joining us.
landing gear down and locked. as you can see, space shuttle atlantis, the wheelsls touchi down at kennedy space center. bringing to a close the mission just over two weeks in length and bringing to a close a space shuttle program 30 years in the making. this touchdown actually comes 50 years to the day that gus grissom became the second american in space aboard liberty bell 7 and decades of inspiration is drawn from the american space program now draws to a close. it is the 135th flight in shuttle history and, again, this landing watched by a record crowd, invitatatn only of 2,000