Taxpayers on hook for $139 million after loan to failed green automaker is sold Taxpayers are on the hook for a $139 million tab after a U.S. Department of Energy gamble on a green automaker went into the red, The Daily Caller is reporting. The $25 million sale of the stake in Fisker Automotive to Hybrid Tech, owned by Richard Li, will be announced by the Energy Department, sources familiar with the deal told the website. The transaction brings to an end another effort by the Obama administration to use public funds to stimulate green initiatives. Awarded a $529 million loan guarantee by the administration in 2009 to produce the Karma, a $103,000 luxury hybrid car, Fisker failed to meet DOE benchmarks, causing it to lose its loan guarantee two years later. The company drew down on $192 million before its federal funding was pulled, and the Obama administration seized $21 million from the company in April to help repay taxpayers. Together with the $25 million loan sale, the DOE has recovered only $53 million of the original $192 million disbursed. The DOE did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller's request for comment. Fisker's collapse closes yet another sad chapter in DOE's troubled portfolio. The jobs that were promised never materialized and, once again, taxpayers are on the hook for the administration's reckless gamble," House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Pa., and House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Tim Murphy, R-Pa., said in a joint statement. Fisker backers were heavily involved in lobbying the Obama administration and Congress on green energy programs, the Daily Caller reported. The venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers -- where Al Gore is a partner -- was a seed investor in Fisker and spent $400,000 in 2009 and 2010 on lobbying. The firm helped push for the stimulus bill that handed out $90 billion in green energy programs. Click here to read more from The Daily Caller.