Today we’ll try to understand why two members of Colorado’s congressional delegation opposed a cutoff in federal funding for ACORN, the outfit whose employees were caught on hidden camera in several states encouraging tax fraud, prostitution and the use of underage, foreign sex workers.
If that pattern of behavior doesn’t qualify for a funding cutoff, you have to wonder what would.
Bucking a public groundswell, Reps. Diana DeGette and Jared Polis joined just 73 other Democrats to oppose the Defund ACORN Act, which blitzed through the House with 345 votes.
A similarly lopsided Senate vote barred ACORN from Housing and Urban Development grants, with both Colorado senators in accord.
So what’s with DeGette and Polis?
To my surprise, DeGette spokesman Kristofer Eisenla told me the congresswoman doesn’t have a problem with the ACORN funding cutoff but disliked the way it was brought to a vote — through a “motion to recommit” on a separate bill that revamped federal student loans.
DeGette believes this procedure is abused by Republicans for partisan purposes, Eisenla said.
“She voted for the final bill,” he added. “That’s what became law” — with the ACORN funding ban, of course.
So you’re saying she supports the ban, I asked.
Yes, Eisenla insisted.
But the funding cutoff would have failed if everyone had followed DeGette’s lead, I pointed out. Eisenla seemed to be losing patience. She supported the bill in its final form, he repeated.
We wrestled back and forth like this for several frustrating minutes. Eisenla could never quite get me to understand why voting for a major reform of student aid provided evidence that the congresswoman also supported a measure adopted with it that she’d previously tried to kill, although he made a gallant effort.
Congressman Polis, meanwhile, offered a less eccentric reason for his vote.
“I voted against the ACORN amendment last week because it goes against Article 1, Sections 9 and 10, of the U.S. Constitution, which explicitly prohibits the passage of ‘bills of attainder’ — legislation targeted to benefit or penalize an individual or group and often exclude it from government service,” he said in a statement his spokeswoman sent me. While Polis believes ACORN “should be investigated and punished” if necessary, “this ought to be done by the courts.”
Fair enough. And given his scruples regarding potential bills of attainder, Polis no doubt also opposed a measure earlier this year to retroactively seize 90 percent of the bonuses paid to executives at certain large firms to placate public backlash against AIG. Well, no. Polis supported that particular vigilante measure, as did others who now cite the constitution as a shield for ACORN.
A congressional rush to judgment can indeed be a high-risk venture, although ACORN’s sleazy reputation long preceded this PR fiasco. Serious allegations of fraud in ACORN’s voter registration efforts should have been enough to give the government pause. Moreover, as a federal court of appeals noted in 1998, the “most common sort of statutes struck down by the (Supreme) Court” as bills of attainder involve bars to employment — laws barring, for example, former Confederates or Communists from holding certain jobs.
So is it also unconstitutional to bar a group like ACORN from receiving federal grants? “My rereading of the precedents leads me to confidently and unambiguously say, ‘I don’t know,’ ” wrote UCLA constitutional scholar Eugene Volokh recently on his legal blog.
I don’t, either. Still, as one respondent to Volokh argued, “To suggest that a perfectly proper exercise of Congress’ ‘power of the purse’ could be a bill of attainder is to argue that anyone who receives federal funding has an implied claim in perpetuity on the federal purse.”
ACORN a permanent parasite on the federal treasury? Well, at least its staff will help you do your taxes. Or avoid them — depending on your line of work.
E-mail Vincent Carroll at vcarroll@denverpost.com.
