Vitter: Time to cut off ACORN

• By GERARD SHIELDS
• Advocate Washington bureau
• Published: Sep 15, 2009 - Page: 1A

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WASHINGTON – Two members of the Louisiana congressional delegation on Monday called for a committee hearing on ACORN and the severance of its federal funding.

Republican U.S. Sen. David Vitter has long been a big critic of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, commonly known as ACORN. He reintroduced his amendment calling for the federal government not to provide any money to the group.

Vitter and U.S. Rep. Charles Boustany, R-Lafayette, are among several Republican lawmakers calling for investigations and audits following three videos released last week in which ACORN workers in Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and Brooklyn, N.Y., advised people posing as a pimp and prostitute how to skirt federal tax laws.

ACORN also came under fire last year after members in several states were accused of submitting fraudulent voter registration forms.

On Friday, the U.S. Census Bureau cut off its ties to have ACORN help in counting people next year for the 2010 census.

“The Census dropping ACORN as a partner is a good, common sense move,” Vitter said Monday. “Now we must go one step further and support my simple and direct amendment, which declares that no federal funds go to ACORN.”

Vitter has been unsuccessful in similar amendments in the past. Earlier in the year, he tried to block the nomination of the Census Bureau director until the ACORN funds were cut off.

“We are the boogeyman for the right-wing and its echo chambers,” said Bertha Lewis, ACORN’s chief organizer, in a prepared statement Monday.

Arthur Z. Schwartz, a New York lawyer representing ACORN, wrote in a letter to Roger Ailes, president of Fox News, which aired the tapes last week, “It is very clear that the questions being asked are a voiceover, placed on the tape by the filmmaker. The staffer involved claims that the questions she was asked were not the questions asked by the voiceover online.”

ACORN is considering a lawsuit against Fox News, according to Schwartz.

ACORN, which advocates for the poor, received $1.6 million for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30 to provide housing services to low-income communities, according to the Web site USASpending.gov. Between 2003 and 2006, the group received $8.2 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Web site showed.  

ACORN National Operations is headquartered in Brooklyn, N.Y. The group’s Organizing and Support Center is headquartered in New Orleans.

On the U.S. House side, Boustany called for the House Ways and Means Committee to hold a hearing to investigate ACORN. The videos indicate that the group’s tax filing assistance programs show evidence of suggested tax fraud, Boustany said Monday.