Remove ACORN Slush Fund from Bailout Bill

The bailout bill drafted by liberal Congressional leaders contains a massive slush fund that will benefit the fraud-ridden left-wing group ACORN, which must be removed, argues Investors Business Daily. (We earlier discussed the slush fund for ACORN and its history of voter fraud and financial fraud).

Investors Business Daily has a multipart series on how those same liberal politicians spawned the mortgage crisis by blocking reform of the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which used their privileged status as government-sponsored enterprises to buy up “hundreds of billions of dollars in substandard mortgages,” and how “affordable housing” regulations imposed by the Clinton Administration encouraged them to gamble further at taxpayers’ expense.  Fannie Mae gave money to ACORN, engaged in massive accounting fraud, political bullying, and heavy-handed attacks on dissenters.

In their bailout proposals, Congress and the Bush Administration have given short shrift to potentially much less costly alternatives (see here, here, here, and here for examples) and reforms of burdensome regulations that would reduce the need for a bailout.  They have also done nothing to remedy goernment regulations and affordable housing mandates that helped spawn the mortgage crisis, or to guard against unpleasant side-effects of a bailout such as future bubbles and inflation.