Corruption in ACORN

by Dan Burton

                          CORRUPTION IN ACORN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. You know, Mr. Speaker, one of the things that
concerns me is that the more liberal media seems to ignore some of the
things that are extremely important to the people of this country and
to the freedoms we enjoy and the money that's being spent by the
Congress.
  This weekend and today I watched a number of these shows that I watch
on a regular basis because those of us in this body, we follow the news
very, very closely. Mr. Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Mr. O'Reilly, who
are all on FOX, focused attention over the past few weeks on this ACORN
organization. It's really interesting to find out that ACORN, which
helped the President get elected, was such a strong force for him and
whom he congratulated on the support they gave him, and he told them he
wanted to work with them and he wanted to have their advice on issues
of major concern. So he's very close to ACORN.
  ACORN, which received $53 million from 1993 until now--that's 16
years. They received $53 million over 16 years. This year, they now
have access to $8.5 billion. Now, I mean, that's a heck of a reward, it
seems like to me, for being supportive of the administration. Then Mr.
Frank, on the Banking Committee, puts legislation through, which has
passed the House, that would give them access to an additional $1.5
billion. That's $10 billion ACORN has access to.
  If you were watching any of these television shows in the last week,
you'll see that some people went in and they posed as a prostitute and
a man who was soliciting for a prostitute. I think they call him a
pimp. They asked the advice of ACORN, and ACORN gave them advice on how
to circumvent the law, how to hide what they were doing from the law,
how they could make money and not report it to the Government of the
United States.
  Then these people asked, Well, we want to bring some young people in
from South America. They're underage, and we want them to work for us
in this prostitution ring. The people at ACORN said--and there were two
or three of them--they said, Well, here's how you do it. And they
explained to them how they could claim them as children or dependents
and expand their ring of prostitution. This is all documented. It's on
television, and it's in the papers--some papers, very few. Yet ACORN is
going to get almost $10 billion.
  They have been involved in other nefarious activities, and they were
supposed to work on the Census. Can you imagine? The way the States get
money from the Federal Government is based, in large part, on the
Census that's taken--how many people live in a congressional district,
how many people live in a State--and the money that comes from the
Federal Government is divvied up, in large part, on the basis of the
Census.
  So ACORN was going to have a major role in working to count the
number of people throughout the country and, in effect, decide where
this money is going to be going. This is an organization that has a
tremendous amount of corruption. They're finding more and more
corruption every single day, and the taxpayers of this country are
allowing them, through the Congress, to have access to almost $10
billion of our taxpayers' dollars. That is insane.
  We've asked the Congress and leaders of the Democrat Party, the
chairmen of these various committees, to hold hearings on this, to have
an investigation, and we have yet to have any investigation whatsoever,
not one. So today I wrote a letter to Chairman Towns of the Government
Reform and Oversight Committee, who is a very good friend of mine and a
very fair man. I have asked Chairman Towns to have an investigation
into ACORN.
  When you're talking about $10 billion of the taxpayers' money going
to an organization that we know has been involved in various nefarious
activities and that we know has been involved in corruption, we
certainly should at least look into what they're doing and stop them
from using taxpayers' dollars to do these things.
  This is something that we shouldn't allow anybody to shovel under the
rug. The administration should take responsibility for conducting an
investigation and pushing for it, and the Members of Congress on the
majority side that has the chairmanships in both the House and the
Senate need to push very hard for an investigation, and we need to do
it now. We need not to give them one dime until that investigation is
completed.

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