Battery manufacturer A123 Systems, which got nearly $250 million in grant money under President Barack Obama’s 2009 stimulus program, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Tuesday morning – just in time for Republican Mitt Romney to add the firm to his indictment of Obama’s green-energy program. In the first debate with Obama, Romney used the collapse of solar firm Solyndra to attack Obama’s energy agenda.

Herwig Prammer / Reuters

Energy Secretary Steven Chu

“A123’s bankruptcy is yet another failure for the President’s disastrous strategy of gambling away billions of taxpayer dollars on a strategy of government-led growth that simply does not work,” said Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul on Tuesday.

But A123, based in Watertown, Mass., but with manufacturing plants in Michigan, got funding under the administrations of both Obama and President George W. Bush. The firm got a crucial influx of early money from the Bush administration in 2001 and 2003. In fact, the firm might not have been alive in 2009 to get its Obama stimulus funding if it hadn’t been for earlier subsidies under the Bush administration.

In a speech at a business conference on Sept. 4, 2008, then-Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman noted that in 2003 his department had made an award under the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program to A123 Systems for work on lithium-ion batteries.

“While this company now has major private investors, on many occasions the company's founders have described this SBIR grant as their first source of outside funding,” Bodman said. “And the results, now just five years later, are remarkable. This company now employs over 1,100 people who produce batteries with an unprecedented combination of power, safety and long life…”

He added, “I've had the pleasure of visiting A123 Systems, located right outside of Boston, and I can tell you firsthand that this company is doing terrific work.”

According to Jan. 21, 2010, testimony by current Energy Secretary Steven Chu before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, A123 Systems received SBIR grants in 2001 and 2003 totaling $850,000 to refine its lithium-ion battery technology.

Bush also laid the foundation for Obama administration subsidies to alternative-energy firms when he signed into law the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. (GOP vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan voted against the bill, partly due to an earmark in the measure that he said would benefit one forestry company.)

The 2007 law created, but did not fund, the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing (ATVM) program. In the summer of 2008 as the automobile industry was beginning to fall on hard times, Midwestern lawmakers proposed $3.75 billion to activate the ATVM and make loans to U.S. vehicle and battery firms.

When Obama became president, one of his highest priorities was to spur manufacturing of alternative-energy technologies and vehicles. The Energy Department used ATVM grants as a way to subsidize green-energy firms. On Aug. 5, 2009, Vice President Joe Biden announced $1.35 billion in DOE grants to spur advanced battery and electric vehicle manufacturing. A123 Systems got $249 million of that money.

“Terrific news," said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. "A123 Systems is doing the kind of cutting-edge work we need to get our manufacturing industry back on track and create jobs here at home… These grants are a wise investment that will pay many dividends."

That summer of 2009 was a buoyant time for the firm, which launched its initial public offering in September, raising $390 million. “The IPO entered venture capital lore, a beacon for clean-tech entrepreneurs everywhere,” reported Climate Wire. The stock surged from its IPO price of $13.50 a share to more than $28 before 2009 ended.

The firm also got another Energy Department grant of $5 million to determine whether its batteries could store emergency power for the electric grid.

In January 2010, A123 was one of the firms benefiting from another stimulus cash influx – as the Labor Department announced the state of Michigan would get $5 million in grant money to train workers in green-energy skills.

In September 2010, Obama called Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm to congratulate her and A123 Systems for opening the largest lithium-ion battery manufacturing plant in the United States in Livonia, Mich.

"It is incredibly exciting to see how far you guys have come,” Obama said, in remarks reported by the Detroit News. “This is about the birth of an entire new industry in America -- an industry that's going to be central to the next generation of cars.”

But there were skeptics.

By early 2011 one stock analyst, Theodore O’Neill, now at Litchfield Hills Research, told Climate Wire that A123 was heading for “a giant train wreck” in the next few years. He said the tiny numbers of U.S. battery-powered vehicles would not create enough demand for A123 to make a profit.

By this summer GOP lawmakers were raising the alarm about a Chinese firm taking majority ownership of A123 Systems. “We need to be sure that when the federal government invests close to a quarter of a billion dollars in grants to a company, that the technology developed as a result of this taxpayer support doesn’t end up in China,” said Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.

But that Chinese investment didn’t happen, and on Tuesday A123 filed for bankruptcy. A larger firm, Johnson Controls, will buy its factories in Michigan.

In an interview Tuesday, O’Neill said, “The Fisker Karma was the only car taking the A123 batteries. And I started calling around to dealers and as late as November of 2011 the dealers still didn’t have cars to sell. So you had A123 going ahead and building a 600,000-square-foot manufacturing facility for which there’s no end market. It’s not clear to me how much the Department of Energy is to blame for having A123 expand as rapidly as they did in advance of actual demand or whether it was all (A123’s chief executive) David Vieau” who erred in his forecast. “It’s probably a little bit of both,” he said.

Republicans have latched onto a new report about the defunct solar panel maker Solyndra, in an attempt to ding the Obama White House for embarking on a fool's errand with its green energy initiatives and engaging in cronyism when one of its biggest investments took a turn for the worse.

Solyndra has been on the tongues of conservatives -- including Mitt Romney, who staged a surprise press conference out of the company's former headquaters in May -- for months. And they feel that a new report released this week by Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee only strengthens their case against the incumbent administration.

Republicans' central narrative is this: the White House anxiously approved $535 million in loan guarantees for Solyndra -- a company with a principal investor who was a major fundraiser for President Barack Obama -- as part of its green energy program. And, the GOP contends, when Solyndra started to struggle, the Department of Energy restructured its loans despite misgivings from the Office of Management and Budget.

In a series of emails obtained and published by the committee and written during the initial approval process for the loans, one OMB staff member writes of the pressure to finish its review of the Solyndra loan.

"It's based on pressure from the VP's office," another OMB staffer wrote in response. "[The Department of Energy] would like to schedule the closing for tomorrow, and [Energy Secretary Steven] Chu will be in CA and [Vice President Biden] by video link for Friday announcement."

A Democratic report issued Thursday by the minority staff of the Energy and Commerce Committee acknowledged that the White House was certainly interested in an "expeditious decision" on the loans -- but mostly because Solyndra was the first major loan guarantee of the program.

But, Democrats contend, there is no evidence that this pressure influenced the ultimate decision to offer Solyndra a guarantee. Moreover, Democrats said in their dissenting report that White House officials told investigators that they weren't aware of any involvement in Solyndra by political fundraisers until it was first raised by Republicans.

The White House said Thursday, too, that the Republican-led inquiry was about little more than politics.

"I did see these reports, and what it points out is, yet again, proof positive that none of the accusations that the Republicans have made about this particular loan have turned out to be true -- that this was a merit-based decision," White House press secretary said in a gaggle Thursday aboard Air Force One. "What we knew then we still know, and this is a 18-month, costly investigation that only highlights the fact that Congress is not doing what it should do to help the American people."

The Republican report produced no hard evidence of malfeasance in the Obama administration's management of Solyndra, but the mere appearance of impropriety has fed into a narrative about transparency and waste that the GOP has sought to advance.

"When President Obama claimed government helped build businesses, he must have been thinking about his failed attempt to prop up Solyndra," Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul said Friday in an email to reporters. "But after half a billion in wasted taxpayer dollars and nearly 2,000 unemployed workers, it’s clear the only people who lost on President Obama’s Solyndra gamble were American taxpayers."

In particular, Republicans have highlighted a portion of the emails contained within the same GOP report detailing the cost to taxpayers if the government restructured Solyndra's loans, or rather, let the company liquidate.

An energy official wrote in early January of 2011 that the expected loss under liquidation would be $141 million versus an expected loss of $385 million under a loan restructuring.

Democrats argue, though, that the Solyndra loan wasn't imprudent in the way Republicans would make it seem, and that the process to restructure the loan was the process of usual internal administration deliberation. Besides, Democrats contend, Solyndra might not have had to file for bankruptcy if it weren't for a sudden influx onto the market of cheaper Chinese alternatives.

But Republicans aren't likely to let go of Solyndra as an issue during this campaign. The June NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that Americans who were familiar with the company had a negative impression of it. Two percent of respondents in the June poll said they had a positive impression of Solyndra, versus 24 percent who said they had a negative opinion of the failed company. But 59 percent of respondents said in mid-June that they were unfamiliar with the company.

GOP officials also said that Solyndra tests particularly well in data they’ve collected, especially as individuals are exposed to more information about its difficulties and the government's support for the company.

The bet is that if Obama and Solyndra are tethered together in voters' minds, it will benefit Romney come election day.

"Let’s look at the results. Today, Staples employs roughly 90,000 people," the presumptive GOP presidential nominee said Friday in Nevada, referencing the office supplies company that Bain Capital helped support during his time in charge.

"And Solyndra, I think you know how many people it employs," Romney added.

FREMONT, CA -- Mitt Romney decried what he said was the Obama administration's economic failures and cronyism outside the headquarters of a defunct company that Republicans have upheld as the very symbol of those shortcomings.

The presumptive presidential nominee stood for an impromptu press conference outside the headquarters of Solyndra, the now-bankrupt solar energy company that had been the beneficiary of a federal loan, which, Republicans contend, was doled out as a political favor.

"It's a symbol not of success but of failure. It's also a symbol of a serious conflict of interest," Romney said outside the headquarters, a destination which wasn't made public until the last possible minute, even to the traveling press corps that cover the former Massachusetts governor.

"An independent inspector general looked at this investment and concluded that the administration had steered money to friends and family - to campaign contributors," Romney said, referring to a series of loans which backstopped the company and would have paid investors back before taxpayers. "This building, this half a billion dollar taxpayer investment, represents a serious conflict of interest on the part of the president and his team."

The bankrupt company's opulent headquarters, long a target of Romney's derision on the stump, made for a powerful visual backdrop as Romney lambasted what he said was the company -- and the president's -- failings.

"It's also a symbol of how the president thinks about free enterprise," Romney continued. "Free enterprise to the president means taking money from the taxpayers and giving it freely to his friends."

The appearance came amid a battle over optics between the Romney and Obama campaigns that literally stretched the continent.

In Boston this morning, the senior strategist for the president's re-election, David Axelrod, rallied other supporters of Obama's on the steps of the Massachusetts statehouse to decry Romney's lone term as governor. Axelrod had intended to highlight what he said were Romney's broken promises as governor, though that message was muddled as a Romney campaign aide gathered supporters to heckle Axelrod, drawing the Chicago Democrat into an exchange over their jeers.

"Romney economics didn't work then and it won't work now," Axelrod said over the boos of the pro-Romney crowd.

Here in Fremont, a reporter asked Romney about the guerrilla tactics employed by his campaign.

"Many of the events I go to, there are large groups of, if you will, Obama supporters there heckling me. And at some point you say, you know what, sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If they’re going to be heckling us, why we’re not going to sit back and play by very different rules," Romney said. "If the president is going to have his people coming to my rallies, and heckling, why, we’ll show them that, you know, we conservatives have the same kind of capacity he does."

But amid the campaign trail antics, Romney also took a moment to address the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Syria following a massacre this past weekend leading to the deaths of 100 civilians. Romney has repeatedly urged U.S. allies in the region, including Turkey and Saudi Arabia, to arm anti-government rebels and provide other aid necessary to remove the Assad regime from power.

Romney called the coordinated expulsion of Syrian diplomats by the United States and other allies "of course the right thing to do," but also a "very small matter in something as significant as the course of Syria."

"I hope we understand that Syria and what's going on there is a a ray of sunshine in the Middle East because you have a very dangerous tyrant, who has allied his country with Iran, which is seeking to become a dominant power in the middle east," Romney said.

"Syria is the headquarters of Hamas in the middle east. It is Iran's only Arab ally. Syria is the route for arming Hezbollah in Lebanon. It is important to see a change in leadership in Syria," Romney continued, adding that the peace plan implemented there by former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan was not"advancing in the way I think we could be advancing," and calling on President Obama to take a greater leadership role in resolving the crisis.

NBC's Garrett Haake

Mitt Romney (R) on the campaign press bus heading to the former site of the company Solyndra.

UPDATED AT 3 PM ET

FREMONT, CA -- When Mitt Romney arrived at the gates of the bankrupt solar energy company Solyndra this afternoon, he didn't do it before cheering supporters or backed by a large coterie of staff.

He pulled up on the press bus with the rest of his traveling media contingent.

Romney's staff, fearful, they said, of being blocked by the administration from holding an event here, kept the location of today's press conference secret, even from the press who cover the candidate.

On Wednesday, reporters who cover the candidate were told to get themselves from Las Vegas to San Francisco for an "event" in the bay area on Thursday. No other details were given, except to be ready at a hotel parking lot early this morning.

Professionally curious, the Romney press corps set about cracking the secret code of the event and breaking the story.

"I've got nothing for ya," one aide told NBC.

"Sorry, can't help you," replied another Romney staffer via email, complete with a frowny face emoticon.

And so it was this morning, when 31 members of the national and local press boarded a bus in the parking lot of the Holiday Inn Express, armed only with educated guesses – no reportable confirmation – that Romney was headed to Solyndra.

Message discipline, and an inner circle that sees leaks as treasonous, won this round.

The secrecy, one top aide explained, was to prevent the Obama administration blocking the event from taking place. The aide did not explain how that might happen.

The aide also said the campaign did not fear protesters disrupting the event, as pro-Romney protesters and staff did to Obama senior adviser David Axelrod this morning at an event on the steps of the statehouse in Boston.

Then, Romney boarded the bus.

Beyond a cursory wave and good morning, he didn't chat with the press, but rode in relative silence with a small group of aides and a few Secret Service agents surrounding him in the front of the bus.

Romney was asked why the event -- which ultimately lasted only about 10 minutes on a Nimitz Highway median -- was kept so secret. He offered a somewhat conspiratorial answer.

"I think there are people who don’t want to see this event occur, don’t want to have questions asked about this particular investment, don’t want to have people delve into the idea that the president took a half-a-billion dollars of taxpayer money and devoted it to an enterprise that was owned in large measure by his campaign contributors," Romney said.

This is the former Massachusetts governor's first trip to Solyndra, but he regularly highlights its failing, despite support from governmental loans, in his stump speeches and fundraisers.