October 5, 2009 - by Paul Blumenthal
A few weeks ago Congress passed the Defund ACORN Act (it was attached to another bill during a motion to recommit), a bill designed at defunding the beleaguered community organization. While many Democrats voted for the bill, most seemed caught flat-footed. Most of Congress appeared to be caught not knowing what they were even voting on. Later examination of the bill revealed that it was so broad as to not only ban federal funds from going to ACORN, but also to major defense contractors like Lockheed Martin and Northrup Grumman.
Rep. Betty McCollum (D. MN) released a new bill (H.R. 3679) to counter the previous one, this time taking the errors in the Defund ACORN Act seriously. The question seems to be: would Republicans eager to defund a community organization allied with Democrats also vote to deny funds to other organizations that have been found to have defrauded the government? This would not just include defense contractors, but also health care companies like Pfizer.
The key point in McCollum’s bill is that the penalty of cutting federal funds to an organization would only occur if the organization was found guilty. The Defund ACORN Act simply stated that an organization needed to be under investigation, which could be cause for abuse by federal, state or local prosecutors.
We’ll see how those 345 congressmen who voted for the Defund ACORN Act vote on this bill if it is brought up.
Read the Bill (H.R. 3679). It may put the focus more on Corporations, not so much on organizations like Acorn.
It may trigger when an employee, way down on the totem pole, is convicted of anything. 
It serves always to distract the public councils and feeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions.
It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution in those entrusted with its administration to confine themselves with in their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department to encroach upon another. The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all departments in one and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism.
If in the opinion of the people the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed."
…George Washington’s Farewell Address…
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