Washington, D.C. – June 4, 2009 – (RealEstateRama) —U.S. Representative Michele Bachmann (R-MN) today introduced the Taxpayer Protection and Anti-Fraud Act, which would prohibit any organization that has been indicted for violations of state or federal election laws from accessing taxpayer dollars through Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) programs.
“This is about how Congress spends the people’s money and about setting the bar high. Accessing federal funding is a privilege, not a right, and it must be earned,” said Bachmann. “Congress should not allow groups, such as ACORN which has been repeatedly investigated and indicted for voter registration fraud, to receive taxpayer dollars. You can’t violate the public trust with one hand and take the taxpayers’ money with the other.”
House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH), an original cosponsor of Bachmann’s bill, said, “ACORN played a key role in the financial meltdown that has cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars, and is reportedly under federal investigation for allegations of voter fraud. It is an outrage that this organization continues to receive taxpayer dollars. Immediate action is necessary to ensure that no additional tax dollars are directed to ACORN, or any organization that is under investigation for this type of crime. I’d like to thank Rep. Bachmann for introducing a bill to make that happen, and I’m proud to support it.”
The House recently considered the Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act (H.R. 1728), which originally included the same taxpayer protection language. This commonsense language was gutted at the behest of Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-MA) on the same week that 39 charges of voter registration fraud were filed in Nevada against ACORN and two of its former employees and seven employees of ACORN were charged with forgery and election law violations in Pennsylvania. The Frank Amendment gave a pass to groups like ACORN and allowed them to continue to access millions of taxpayer dollars while simultaneously appearing in courts across the country about their violations of the law and the public trust.
“Easy access to taxpayer dollars has allowed ACORN to fund their political and questionable activities for years. We have a fiduciary duty to the taxpayers to close the door to federal funding on groups that have violated the public trust like this,” said Bachmann.
Contact: Debbee Keller or Dave Dziok 202-225-2331
