PORKER OF THE MONTH Goes To Seven Nutty Senators Supporting ACORN

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Porker of the Month is a dubious honor given to lawmakers, government officials, and political candidates who have shown a blatant disregard for the interests of taxpayers.

Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) today named the seven senators who voted on Monday, September 14 to continue sending tax dollars for housing and community development programs to the Association of Community Organization for Reform Now (ACORN) its September Porkers of the Month.
The seven senators are Roland Burris (D-Ill.), Robert Casey (D-Pa.), Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.). The 83-7 vote to cut off funding for the group in the fiscal year 2010 Department of Transportation, Housing and Urban Development Appropriations Act came on the heels of the release of explosive video footage of ACORN’s employees in Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and Brooklyn, giving questionable legal and tax advice to filmmaker James Keefe and a female friend who posed as a pimp and a prostitute. ACORN’s employees gave guidance on how to illegally shelter income, mislead the Internal Revenue Service, and obfuscate the ages and immigration status of underage girls who were going to be used as prostitutes in a make-believe brothel. All of the videos can be viewed at http://www.biggovernment.com/.

“Cutting off funds to ACORN should have been the easiest vote of the year, yet these senators could not bring themselves to do it,” said CAGW President Tom Schatz. “Taxpayers should not be accomplices in the rampant malfeasance of ACORN. Sen. Gillibrand deserves special opprobrium for her vote, since one of the videos was shot in Brooklyn’s ACORN office, and the New York Post had a story on the scandal prior to the vote. Apparently Sen. Schumer reads the local papers and Sen. Gillibrand does not. There is enough in these videos to warrant a nationwide Justice Department investigation into ACORN’s potentially criminal activities. All funds for ACORN should be cut off, in both the rest of the appropriations bills, and also for any stimulus money for which the group is eligible,” added Schatz.

According to an analysis by the Office of House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), ACORN has received at least $53.6 million in taxpayer-funded grants since 1994, not including millions more from states and localities, as well as foundations. Fannie Mae, for example, which was taken over by the federal government a year ago, bestowed millions in grants on ACORN over the years.

For keeping the spigot open to this seedy group in the face of pervasive unethical, if not outright crooked behavior, and trying to enable ACORN to fund its dysfunctional deeds with the taxes of hard-working Americans, CAGW names Senators Roland Burris (D-Ill.), Robert Casey (D-Pa.), Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) its September Porkers of the Month.

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