The seven senators who voted against defunding ACORN

By Ethel C. Fenig

By a vote of 83-7, the Senate voted to cut off funding to ACORN from the Department of Transportation and Department of Housing and Urban Development appropriations bill. According to Fox News, your tax dollars have been very generous to ACORN.

ACORN Housing Corporation received $1.6 million to provide housing services to low-income communities in this fiscal year, ending Sept. 30, according to USASpending.gov, a federal government Web site for tracking government grants.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development Grants has given $8.2 million to ACORN in the years between 2003 and 2006, as well as $1.6 million to ACORN affiliates.

Now who were those seven senators who were apparently unfazed by ACORN's bland unconcern of providing mortgage money to a supposed prostitute and her pimp, even counseling them on evading taxes? (Nine senators did not vote.)

# Dick Durbin (D-IL)
# Roland Burris (D-IL)
# Robert Casey (D-PA)
# Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)
# Patrick Leahy (D-VT)
# Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
# Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)

What does ACORN think of this? Bertha Lewis, chief organizer of ACORN stated

We are their Willy Horton for 2009. We are the boogeyman for the right-wing and its echo chambers. If ACORN did not exist, the right-wing would have needed to create us in order to achieve their agenda, their missions, their ideal, retrograde America.

Rick Moran adds:

It's no accident that both IL senators voted against defunding ACORN. The group is virtually an extension of the Democratic machine in IL, oftentimes using intimidation tactics against those who dare go against the machine.

They are particularly radical in the state as well - and very powerful. No politician goes against them without thinking twice.