UPDATE: You should see the Senate version of the bill… I just got done reading it… holy god.
Note: Background info on ACORN as a follow up has been posted HERE
Back to our original programming…
HOLY CRAP!
No wonder the Republicans are freaking out over this bill and the whole thing is about to fall through…
The friggin Democrats put EARMARKS in the bill!!!!
And not only are they trying to earmark the bill, they are earmarking the bill for ACORN, an activist group that is under investigation for voter registration fraud in several states.
Leave it to the Democrats….
Will it never end? Seriously?
For more info MM is keeping updates.
UPDATE: An explanation from Papau2 (An Author Here On Texas Hill Country)
Sen. Lindsay Graham has jumped a few logic hurdles to get from the Affordable Housing Trust Fund — part of the legislation that passed the Senate Banking Committee in May and is poised to come to the Senate floor as early as this week — to a 20% of bailout bill will go to groups like the ACORN and the National Council of La Raza.
The “trust fund” does get its revenues from a legislatively fixed share of the surpluses of the government’s Federal Housing Administration or the profits from the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The latest version — in the housing and GSE oversight bill that cleared the Senate Banking Committee in May — would establish the fund by taking 1.2 basis points of interest from Fannie and Freddie’s loan portfolio — about $500 million a year. – over the 2 year life of the bailout that is 1 billion out of $700 billion in the rescue bill with $625 million going to Acorn and such groups for “housing aid”- after two years, all of the money to Acorn would go to the housing grant for bailing out troubled homeowners through FHA guarantees of modified loans (Richard Shelby in May stated he had reached a “compromise” with committee chairman Chris Dodd on the housing fund such that money from the “trust fund” would be used to fund the bill’s main action of bailing out troubled homeowners through FHA guarantees of modified loans. After two years, all of the money would go to the housing grant. The version of the bill that passed the Senate committee in May “diverted” half of the money intended for the housing trust fund in its first year and 25% in its second year, but after that 100% of the funds go into the housing trust fund).
The trust fund would allow recipients (Acorn and such) to use the money for lobbying and possibly political campaigning only because the prohibitions on using the funds for lobbying and political activity contain virtually no teeth in enforcing these bans. There are no explicit requirements for recipients of the grants to fill out timesheets for housing activity, or restrictions on groups using grant money to pay employees who also happen to do other things — such as lobbying and political campaigning. And there are really no penalties other than being forced to give the money back and being disqualified for a new grant.
It is true that ACORN histrory includes election fraud and misuse of federal funds with several ACORN workers indicted and/or convicted of voter registration fraud with phony signatures, and with Acorn sanctioned specifically for misuse of federal housing funds. In 1994, the ACORN Housing Corporation (AHC) received a grant from the newly created Americorps to assist low-income families at finding housing. In applying for the grant, the AHC claimed its activities were completley separate from ACORN – only to find out one year later via the Americorps Inspector General that “AHC used Americorps grant funds to benefit ACORN either directly or indirectly” with several instances of cost-shifting from ACORN’s lobbying group to the housing entity, and also found several instances of steering recipients of housing counseling into ACORN memberships.
Filed under: Congress, General Politics | Tagged: acorn, Bailout, Delay, democrats, earmarks, Fail, Obama | 40 Comments »
