Durbin, Burris oppose cutting ACORN off
WASHINGTON - Illinois' Democratic senators defended their votes trying to stop legislation that would bar the group ACORN from getting federal funding.
"I believe it would be a mistake to pass judgment based on a few isolated incidents," Sen. Roland Burris, a Chicago Democrat, said in a statement Tuesday. "ACORN is a community-based organization that employs thousands of Americans, and they do a lot of good work."
Both Burris and Sen. Dick Durbin, a Springfield Democrat, on Monday voted against legislation that would prohibit ACORN - the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now - from getting funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. However, the legislation was approved 83-7.
Durbin said a string of bad publicity motivated his colleague's votes.
"The reason the amendment passed is because of some videotapes showing ACORN employees engaged in terrible behaviors," Durbin told the Daily Herald.
The already controversial anti-poverty organization's standing has suffered a beating after a duo of conservative activists posing as a prostitute and her pimp released hidden-camera footage in which ACORN employees in Baltimore gave advice on house buying and how to account on tax forms for the supposed prostitute's income.
Two other videos depict similar situations in ACORN offices in Brooklyn and Washington, D.C. ACORN officials said they have has fired the employees involved and blasted conservative media for pumping up the scandal.
Durbin criticized the action caught on tape but defended ACORN as an organization.
"These videotapes should be investigated. Those who are breaking the rules should be accountable for their misdeeds," Durbin said. "But ACORN provides counseling to thousands of families nationwide that face foreclosures. It's unfair to deprive these people from the help ACORN provides them because of three employees."
ACORN runs fair-housing education programs and counsels low-income people on how to get mortgages. This week's overwhelming Senate vote is the latest bad news for the group.
Last week the Census Bureau told ACORN that it no longer wanted the group's assistance for the 2010 census.
The organization is also under investigation in several voter-registration fraud-cases. Last week, prosecutors in Miami-Dade County, Fla., arrested 11 people for falsifying hundreds of voter applications during a registration drive last year. ACORN tipped the authorities off to the problem.
The provision that passed the Senate is an amendment to a housing and transportation spending proposal by Nebraska Republican Sen. Mike Johanns. He pegs ACORN's cumulative federal funding at $53 million since 1994.
Daily Herald news services contributed to this report