Chairman Frank Sides With ACORN

Michele Bachmann | April 30, 2009 1:41 PM

Yesterday, the House Financial Services Committee passed my ACORN amendment that will prevent organizations, or employees of organizations, that have been indicted for voter fraud from being eligible for the housing counseling grants and legal assistance grants authorized under the Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act.

Chairman Barney Frank accepted the amendment right there in front of the whole committee -- I assumed because it was his very own language as passed under the Housing and Economic Recovery Act (HERA) of 2008 -- and the amendment was then passed by unanimous voice vote.

Later that day, Chairman Frank said he had reservations about my amendment and would discuss them with me. His staff approached mine with specific changes he would like to make -- changes which eviscerate the meaning of the amendment and were clearly not acceptable. Again, this was puzzling given that it is identical to the language Chairman Frank included in HERA just last year.

Their changes include: Raising the bar from indictment to conviction to preclude an organization from getting taxpayer dollars, limiting the time the ban is in effect, and applying the standard to only senior employees. We're talking about giving tax dollars to organizations that could be mixed up in criminal actions. Are we expected to keep forking over tax dollars to these organization when they're under the cloud of suspicion of a public criminal indictment?