A Guest Commentary from Congressman Ed Royce (R-Orange County)…
FANNIE, FREDDIE AND ACORN
Last week several of my colleagues and I met with journalist Hannah Giles. You may recall Hannah posed as a prostitute in a series of undercover videos with independent filmmaker James O’Keefe in order to elicit responses from employees of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). These videos recorded over the summer uncovered employees at ACORN offices in five different cities clearly eager to assist this supposed prostitute with tax evasion, human smuggling and child prostitution. The scheme was Hannah’s idea; part of her plan to expose ACORN’s illegal activities across the U.S.
While troubling on its own, Hannah’s story is part of a much larger problem with this activist organization. ACORN has proven time and time again it has no problem breaking our nation’s laws to get what they want. Whether it is to help an apparent prostitute or to change the face of our electoral system, skirting the rule of law appears to be synonymous with ACORN.
For years ACORN has undermined our electoral process. Cases of voter fraud are rampant throughout the country. In last year’s presidential election alone, ACORN was investigated in 14 states for voting irregularities. One of their own subsidiaries (Project Vote) even admitted 400,000 of the voters they registered were fraudulent.
Unfortunately ACORN’s allies in Congress fail to acknowledge this trend. During consideration of the financial regulatory reform legislation last week, an amendment by Chairman Barney Frank was adopted which added an additional $1 billion to the Neighborhood Stabilization Fund (money ACORN would be eligible to receive). If that were not enough, the Jobs for Main Street Act scheduled for consideration today also sends money ACORN’s way, through the Affordable Housing Slush Fund. This fund has been inactive since its inception because its financing mechanism (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) collapsed last fall bringing down the housing market and the financial sector.
Fannie, Freddie and ACORN are inextricably linked. ACORN had a financial interest in Fannie and Freddie growing at unsustainable rates, so they were eager to prevent strong GSE reform over the years. The Affordable Housing Fund took a portion of the GSE’s revenue, so the bigger the GSE’s became, the more money ACORN would receive.
In 2005, when Congress considered this legislation, Fannie, Freddie and ACORN were up here portraying those of us trying to rein in the GSE’s as attempting to attack homeownership and affordable housing. They worked vigorously to defeat legislation I (and others) brought to the House floor to fix the GSE problem. It is unfortunate that they won that fight. We could have kept the GSE’s from getting out of control and our capital markets and the broader economy would be in far better shape than they are today.
Because this money in fungible, the tax dollars sent to one branch of ACORN inevitably subsidize those individuals that were so eager to help Hannah as well as those voter fraud efforts. Going forward we must take two critical steps: (1) completely defund this extreme organization (to ensure not a single tax dollar goes to this group, and (2) fully understand the extent to which ACORN is undermining our electoral process.
Last week, I cosponsored an amendment that would have suspended ACORN’s housing counseling certification until HUD completes an audit of any assistance going to the group. Unfortunately the Rules Committee did not seem to think this was an important issue, so they decided not to let the full House consider the amendment. Rest assured, this will not slow our efforts. We will continue to press this issue until those individuals that so brazenly dismiss the rule of law in our country are held accountable for their actions.