GOP In Congress Aims To Cut ACORN’s Funding

The Senate voted Monday to prohibit the community group, ACORN, from receiving federal funding. This is the latest rebuke ACORN has received in recent days as Republicans attempt to sever all ties between the government and the community group.

House Republican Leader, John Boehner, introduced legislation to prohibit any federal dollar from going to ACORN, also known as the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now.

This comes just one day after the Senate voted to ban ACORN from receiving money in a housing and transportation funding bill. The group helps assist low-income people navigate things such as buying a house, refinancing a home, and filing taxes.

Senator Mike Johanns (R-Neb.) authored the amendment, which prevents ACORN from applying for public grants from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

“Yesterday the Senate made a clear, a very, very clear statement that enough is enough,” Johanns said.

To add to ACORN’s woes, last week the U.S. Census Bureau cut its ties to the organization that used its members to gather information for the census.

This comes after two people in their early 20s, posing as a pimp and a prostitute, traveled to five cities across the country visiting nearly two dozen ACORN offices. They released videotapes of two ACORN employees in Baltimore and one in New York counseling them on how to buy a home for a prostitution business.

The videos have been featured on Fox and also housed on the website BigGovernment.com, which is owned and run by Andrew Breitbart, a conservative who owns numerous media outlets including Breitbart.com and Breitbart.tv. Senator Johanns is a contributor to the site, so is Ken Blackwell, the former Ohio Secretary of State accused of disenfranchising thousands of black voters during the 2004 election.

The release of these videos was fuel added to a fire. The right has long targeted ACORN.

ACORN was accused of participating in widespread voter fraud during the 2008 elections, but out of 60 offices, hundreds of employees and thousands of volunteers, no one has been convicted of any crime.

Senator Johanns says his amendment will not be his last.

“I won’t stop at this point. I mean their behavior is so abhorrent to what we‘re trying to do,” Johanns said.

Most Democrats supported Johann‘s amendment, including Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) who said he has not reviewed the latest accusation.

“There was just some bad press,” Feingold said. “That’s the reason the vote went the way it did. It was not because of any particular success of any political group in the country”

Senator Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) was one of seven Democrats to oppose the measure. He represents the state that houses ACORN‘s headquarters.

“I know the right-wing and politics in America have been on a rampage against ACORN since the last election because of voter registration, particularly of minorities, but I think it’s unfair to let two or three incidents condemning an organization which has decades of service to this country,” Durbin said.

Bertha Lewis, CEO of ACORN, said it’s unreasonable to not let them even compete for a grant.

She said these tactics are “modern-day McCarthyism” created by the Right. She says the message sent is that anyone who associates with ACORN will be “vilified.”

Lewis said the employees on the videotape were fired immediately. She also said there is a ten-step process that ACORN uses to help a person obtain housing which incorporates a system of checks. She said that the two undercover film makers just had a conversation with employees, but never proceeded to the steps of filling out paperwork.

The measure that passed the Senate was not part of the House funding bill. The two versions must be reconciled.

Leigh Ann Caldwell is a DC-based journalist/editor for Free Speech Radio News. She is a regular contributor to the NEWS JUNKIE POST.

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