As ACORN is Defunded, Sen. Collins Leading Charge for Inspection
COLLINS ACORN
Bangor Daily News
Kase Wickman
Boston University Washington News Service
Sept. 17, 2009
WASHINGTON—The House stripped ACORN of its eligibility for federal funds Thursday, following the Senate’s example. The vote was 345-75.
The Senate voted, 83-7, Monday to block ACORN from receiving grants from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
ACORN, an acronym for Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now, has taken considerable heat and negative media exposure for the past year, starting with allegations of voter registration fraud during the 2008 presidential elections and most recently with a sting undertaken by Fox News that led to video of ACORN workers in Florida apparently seeking to help sex workers evade taxes to obtain a home loan to start a brothel.
ACORN has received more than $53 million in federal grants since 1994.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the top Republican on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, joined forces Wednesday with U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the senior Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, to press federal agencies to examine the community organizing group’s use of federal funds for the past decade and a half.
Collins and Issa sent letters to the inspectors general of HUD, the Corporation for National and Community Service and the U.S. Small Business Administration, all of which have given funds to ACORN. In the letter to the corporation, they write that “allegations that ACORN has been inappropriately involved in partisan politics have dogged the nonprofit for years.”
Collins, in a statement, said: “At a time when hard-working American families [are] making tough financial sacrifices, I am appalled by recent reports involving the rampant misuse of taxpayer dollars by ACORN. During the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, congressional oversight into how the public’s money is spent has never been more important.”
Should the groups decide that ACORN misused the federal funds, Collins and Issa urged that they recommend that it be placed on the federal government’s Excluded Parties List System, an official category for “parties that are excluded from receiving federal contracts, certain subcontracts and certain federal financial and nonfinancial assistance and benefits,” according to the system’s Web site.
Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) cast her vote Monday in favor of stripping ACORN’s federal financing.
John Gentzel, Snowe’s communications director, said, “Given the recent troubling revelations regarding ACORN’s practices and activities, Sen.Snowe felt it was prudent to take a hard look at providing federal funding for this organization.”
The Senate voted by way of an amendment to the Transportation and Housing and Urban Development appropriations bill; the House attached a rider to the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act which would increase funds for student loans and school repairs and which passed easily Thursday.
The Census Bureau dropped ACORN as a community partner Friday, seeking to distance itself from the negative publicity the group has recently accumulated.
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