10 Feb 2009 Black Activist Slams “Stimulus” Spending Making Billions Available to ACORN

Washington, D.C. – In the nearly trillion dollars in spending contained in the so-called “stimulus” bill the U.S. Senate is now considering are programs that could go into coffers of the left-wing group ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now).

“It’s outrageous that potentially billions of taxpayer dollars may end up aiding a group instrumental in causing the economic crisis in the first place,” said Deneen Borelli, a fellow with the Project 21 black leadership network.

ACORN became infamous during the 2008 presidential campaign when its involvement in fraudulent voter registration efforts and ties to the presidential campaign of Barack Obama were revealed.  ACORN lobbying and intimidation tactics targeting financial institutions are also blamed for helping to create the current mortgage crisis.

In an analysis of the Senate bill by Matthew Vadum of the Capital Research Center on the web site of The American Spectator, there are at least three provisions in the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009” that could be used to funnel money to ACORN:

*  Title XII would make $1 billion available for Community Development Block Grants (CDBG).  Vadum writes: “The [CDBG] program gives [local politicians] wide latitude… to use federal dollars on local projects that they wouldn’t dream of spending their own local tax dollars on.  ACORN loves CDBG because it is adept at lobbying for CDBG funds.”

*  The Self-Help and Assisted Homeownership Opportunity Program would provide $10 million for rehabilitating low-income housing.

*  The 4.19 billion Neighborhood Stabilization Program would help with foreclosure relief.  $3.44 billion would be available to states, localities and nonprofit groups such as ACORN, while $750 million would be available to exclusively to groups.

ACORN has been linked to multiple vote fraud investigations.  63 percent of voter registrations submitted by ACORN in St. Louis in 2003 were determined to be invalid.  In Washington last year, only six of 1,800 voter registrations filed in Seattle were valid.  Washington Secretary of State Scott Reed called the incident “the worst case of voter-registration fraud” in state history.

Additionally, in a New York Post commentary on the mortgage crisis, University of Texas at Dallas economics professor Stan Liebowitz wrote: “From the current hand-wringing, you’d think that the banks came up with the idea of looser underwriting standards on their own, with regulators just asleep on the job. In fact, it was the regulators who relaxed these standards – at the behest of community groups and ‘progressive’ political forces” such as ACORN.

Project 21’s Borelli added: “Just imagine the havoc ACORN could accomplish with as much as $5 billion in taxpayer money.  It’s obvious that giving ACORN billions of dollars will do nothing to stimulate the economy – but it will guarantee left-wing political success.  It seems like little more than a political payoff, and it is just plain wrong.”

Vadum’s analysis of the Senate bill can be found at http://spectator.org/archives/2009/01/27/acorns-stimulus.

Project 21, a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization sponsored by the National Center for Public Policy Research, has been a leading voice of the African-American community since 1992.  For more information, contact David Almasi at (202) 543-4110 x11 or [email protected], or visit Project 21’s website at www.project21.org/P21Index.html.