Cutting Off Funds to ACORN Is Constitutional, and Would Protect Against Voter and Financial Fraud

Earlier, ACORN was caught in a scandal, promoting child prostitution. Both Houses of Congress voted to cut off federal funds to ACORN.  Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and other ACORN supporters argued that this was an unconstitutional bill of attainder.

Hans Von Spakovsky, a legal scholar at the Heritage Foundation, explains why it is perfectly constitutional to cut off funds to ACORN, under controlling Supreme Court precedent.

ACORN receives taxpayer money despite a long history of financial fraud, vote fraud, and tax evasion.

Mickey Kaus, a Democrat, notes that it was ACORN that tipped the close Minnesota Senate race to Al Franken. ACORN has long been active in voter registration drives designed to put liberals in office. It registered most of the state’s new voters, and helped put in office the Minnesota Secretary of State who presided over the controversial recount that switched the lead in Minnesota’s Senate race from incumbent Norm Coleman to Al Franken.  Some lawyers have argued that the election was stolen.  The recount process was also marred by the peculiar actions of the Minnesota Canvassing Board, which treated clear votes for Coleman as non-votes or as votes for Franken.

Far from being contrite about its actions, ACORN is now suing the whistleblowers who exposed its wrongdoing, seeking millions of dollars, and an unconstitutional injunction to silence them.

ACORN is a left-wing group that launched Barack Obama’s career as a community organizer. He has long-standing ties to ACORN, and an ACORN affiliate received received $800,000 from Obama’s campaign.  (Small wonder that Obama has turned out to be the most left-wing president in American history).

Showing as little respect for the First Amendment as ACORN, Obama recently slapped an unconstitutional gag order on a critic of his health-care plan.

Obama’s health-care plan would force states to radically increase their Medicaid spending, resulting in massive tax increases or massive deficits at the state level.

Obama’s health care plan would also raise federal taxes, break campaign promises, increase the federal budget deficit, destroy many inexpensive health-care plans, and take away important freedoms.

Cutting off funds to ACORN would not affect its many affiliates that receive taxpayer money from state and federal agencies.

Bank of America recently suspended its funding of ACORN, which has long used the threat of lawsuits, demonstrations, and regulatory complaints to shake down banks.

ACORN helped spawn the mortgage crisis by promoting “liar loans.”

ACORN stands to profit greatly from Obama’s financial-regulation proposals, which would strengthen the Community Reinvestment Act.  (The Community Reinvestment Act is extremely harmful to banks and prudent lending, pressuring banks to make risky, low-income loans.)

ACORN is a “creature of the Community Reinvestment Act” (CRA), which gives groups like ACORN the ability to shake down banks, by accusing them of making insufficient low-income loans.